


Whatever Happened To Joseph Oda?

by LadyHammerlock



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Ableist Language, Angst and Feels, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Eventual Romance, Explicit Language, Gaslighting, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Joseph works for MOBIUS, M/M, Memory Alteration, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Secret Organizations, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25990708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHammerlock/pseuds/LadyHammerlock
Summary: “Please,” Sebastian said, halfway to begging and so desperate that he didn’t even care how pathetic he sounded anymore. His head continued to throb. “I just… I just need to know where Joseph is…”“Sebastian…” Vankirk whispered. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. You’ve never had a partner named Joseph Oda.”-----Sebastian emerges from Beacon Medical Hospital to discover that certain aspects of reality don't match up with his memories. It's going to be impossible to convince everyone that the nightmares he lived through inside Beacon were real, but Joseph Oda? Sebastian knows that Joseph Oda is real, despite what everyone and everything around him is trying to tell him, and he's not going to give up on one of the best friends he's ever had.Bridges the gap between The Evil Within 1 and 2, and continues on past 2.
Relationships: Sebastian Castellanos/Joseph Oda
Comments: 22
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is an attempt at reconciling a lot of loose ends and questions that I had about both games, especially Joseph's fate and his frankly bizarre absence from the second game. (Have you ever noticed that there's absolutely no sign of him in Sebastian's office/home base? Weird right?)
> 
> I first started working on this fic for Nanowrimo 2017. I have finally decided to start posting it. It's going to be long. I'm not sure exactly how long as I haven't written the ending yet, but we're already looking at over 100k words, so strap in folks.
> 
> Please pay attention to the tags. There's a lot of weird psychological stuff going on in this fic, especially as it progresses, so please keep in mind that parts of this story are going to get dark. If there's anything I haven't tagged for that you would like tagged then please let me know. There will be romance in the form of Sebastian/Joseph eventually, but it will be a while before we get there.
> 
> I'm going to try and update this every week, but there might be times where I need to skip a week for health or life-related reasons. 
> 
> So, with all of that out of the way, I'm happy to finally share the first chapter of Whatever Happened to Joseph Oda? I hope you like it.

CHAPTER ONE

Sebastian Castellanos pulled the shock blanket tighter around his shoulders. It did nothing to dispel the cold that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep inside him, but the emergency medical workers had insisted that he take it, and he figured they knew more about these things than he did.

Beacon Mental Hospital towered in front of him, impossibly daunting and looming over him far more than a building its size had any right to. The lights were still on inside the hospital, shining brightly despite the darkness outside.

Something about it didn’t feel right. Then again, the world hadn’t made sense or felt right to him for quite a while now. He knew that he had only been inside the hospital for a few hours, but even that felt wrong. It felt more like it had been days or even weeks.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing the arm of a junior officer as he ran past.

The younger man turned around to face him, and Sebastian released that he didn’t recognize him. It didn’t matter. Sebastian didn’t recognize half of the younger faces at the KCPD these days.

“Did my partner make it out?” Sebastian asked him.

He had been glancing around the area, looking for signs of Joseph since he had stumbled out of the hospital. He wasn’t expecting to see Kidman again; not after everything that had happened inside Beacon. Not now that he knew she was working for MOBIUS. There was little doubt in his mind that Kidman was about to disappear like smoke.

Joseph though; the last time Sebastian had seen him inside Beacon had been when Kidman had shot him. The bullet had hit Joseph right in the shoulder. When Sebastian closed his eyes he could still see it; the pistol in Kidman’s hand and the brief look of shock on his partner’s face before everything started to fall down all around them.

He could not bring himself to believe that Joseph was dead. The other man had survived far worse than a simple gunshot wound while they had been inside STEM. It had been the last time that Sebastian had seen him though, so Sebastian was starting to get more than a little worried about the other man. He’d asked a couple of others about Joseph, but so far no-one had been able to tell him anything.

“Who?” the junior officer asked.

Great. Another junior officer who had absolutely no idea what was happening and couldn’t tell him anything at all. Damn it. He just wanted someone to tell him that Joseph had made it out all right.

“My partner; Joseph Oda,” Sebastian said, gritting his teeth, clutching the blanket around his shoulders a little tighter and trying not to take his frustration and anxiety out on the officer in front of him. “Japanese-Canadian guy, a few years younger than me, wears glasses?”

The clueless look on the younger man’s face told Sebastian all that he needed to know before he even said a single word.

“Sorry sir,” the officer said, exactly as Sebastian had known he would. “As far as I know you’re the only KCPD officer to have made it out alive.”

Sebastian closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing. It didn’t help.

When he closed his eyes all that he could see were memories of the death and destruction he had experienced inside Beacon; puddles of blood and gore, horrible monstrosities that were worse than anything his brain had ever conjured in his nightmares, and Joseph Oda pressing a gun to his own head and threatening to pull the trigger.

It was all too much to handle. He needed someone that he could rely on; someone that he could open up to and talk through everything with; someone that he cared for. Now that Myra and Lily were gone the only person he had left who fit that description was Joseph.

And now Joseph might be gone as well.

He shook his head, and realized that he was still gripping the junior officer by the fabric of his sleeve.

“Hey, who’s in charge here?” Sebastian asked him. He needed to talk to someone higher up; someone who would know who Joseph was, and might be able to tell Sebastian what had happened to him.

“Lieutenant James Vankirk,” the officer replied.

Sebastian breathed a sigh of relief. James Vankirk, or Jim, as he was known to most of the detectives and high-ranking officers at the KCPD, was not exactly a close friend of Sebastian’s, but they got along well enough that Jim had been one of the guests at Sebastian and Myra’s wedding. He would at least be a familiar face.

“Can you get him for me?” Sebastian asked. “I need to talk to him.”

The younger officer nodded and then dashed away as quickly as he could.

Sebastian shifted the shock blanket, trying to pull it in a way that it might provide any sort of comfort at all, but it wasn’t working. Sebastian wasn’t even sure that he was in shock. Logic dictated that he _should_ be after everything that he had experienced, but more than feeling shocked or traumatized, he just felt exhausted, and now also extremely worried about the fate of his partner.

It only took a couple of minutes for Lieutenant James Vankirk, head of the Krimson City Police Department, to make his way over to the back of the ambulance in which Sebastian now sat, but in that short amount of time Sebastian’s mind had forced him to relive almost every bad experience that he had been through inside Beacon Mental Hospital.

The sight of the police chief, his black hair now turning to grey, should have been a comforting one. It wasn’t though. Sebastian half-expected the police chief to turn into one of the horrible, barbed-wire and nail covered monstrosities that he had faced within STEM at any second; for the man’s dark skin to suddenly become covered in boils and sores, just as Connelly’s had.

“Oh god, Connelly…” Sebastian muttered, holding his head in his hands.

“You doing all right Sebastian?” Vankirk asked. “The medics said you were rambling about all sorts of bullshit when you emerged from there; monsters and psychopaths with superpowers…”

“Where’s Joseph?” Sebastian asked, immediately raising his head to look at his superior officer. There would be time to discuss everything else later. At that moment, there was one thing and one thing only that he was worried about.

James Vankirk frowned at Sebastian.

“Who?” he asked.

“Joseph Oda!” Sebastian snapped. The shock blanket was proving itself to be just as useless as every police officer in Sebastian’s immediate vicinity, and Sebastian threw it back into the recesses of the ambulance’s rear. “My fucking partner!”

Vankirk’s frown deepened.

“You mean Kidman?” he asked Sebastian. He sounded worried, and more than a little confused.

Sebastian had no idea what was going on or what everyone was playing at, but if this was all supposed to be some sort of fucked up joke then Sebastian wasn’t finding it funny.

“No, I mean Detective Joseph Oda. Why does no-one seem to know who I’m talking about?”

For the first time Sebastian understood why it was that Joseph always carried a photo of Sebastian around in his notebook. He wished that he had one of Joseph that he could easily whip out and show to Jim Vankirk. How the hell could the other man not know who Sebastian was talking about? Sebastian and Joseph had been working together for years.

“Sebastian…” Vankirk began. He placed a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder, and Sebastian desperately wanted to shove it off. “Your partner’s name is Juli Kidman. You know that, right?”

“Of course I fucking remember Kidman,” Sebastian said, actually shoving off the other man’s hand this time. “I’m not worried about her though. She’s probably taken off with those fucking MOBIUS secret society assholes. She’s fine! What the hell happened to my other partner!? Where is he?”

Before Sebastian really knew what was happening, he was standing in front of Vankirk, shouting right in the police chief’s face.

For a moment James Vankirk was completely silent as he and Sebastian stared one another down, and then he was sighing and shaking his head.

“Sebastian,” he began slowly. “You’ve clearly been through a lot. I’m going to recommend that you’re taken straight to the hospital for treatment. We can talk about all of this again tomorrow, once you’ve calmed down and are feeling better.”

None of this made any sense. Why wouldn’t Vankirk tell Sebastian what had happened?

“Damn it Jim,” Sebastian said. “No. We’re going to talk to one another now. Where the hell is Joseph?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about Sebastian.”

“My partner!”

“We’ve been through this. Your partner’s name is Juli Kidman…”

“My other partner!”

“Officers don’t usually get more than one partner Sebastian.”

Sebastian opened his mouth, ready to explain to Vankirk that he and Joseph had been training Kidman, but as he tried to remember the actual training itself, or picture the three of them working together in the KCPD offices, all that his brain managed to summon was static and a splitting headache.

He cringed and pressed his head into his hands once more.

“Listen Sebastian,” Vankirk said. He reached out as though he intended to place a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder once more, but clearly thought better of it and pulled his hand back at the last second. “I don’t know what happened in there, but it’s clearly messed with your head.”

“Please,” Sebastian said, halfway to begging and so desperate that he didn’t even care how pathetic he sounded anymore. His head continued to throb. “I just… I just need to know where Joseph is…”

“Sebastian…” Vankirk whispered. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. You’ve never had a partner named Joseph Oda.”

It was the last thing Vankirk said to him before he turned his back on Sebastian and started to walk towards Beacon Mental Hospital. The next thing Sebastian knew he was being bundled up in the back of the ambulance by the emergency medical team and the shock blanket was being placed over his shoulders once more.


	2. Chapter Two

Sebastian had always hated hospitals, and his experiences inside Beacon had done nothing to improve his opinion of them. They were too sparse and clinical, there was too much white, too many machines, and more than anything else, too many reminders of some of the darkest times in his life. For a while he had been able to think about the birth of his daughter Lily, but the fire that had claimed Lily’s life had taken even that away from him.

He lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to find sleep, but even that eluded him. Occasionally he would drift off for a few minutes, but his mind was still too full of blood and fire and the sound of screaming, and he would wake up with his heartbeat racing and his hand searching for the pistol that had been confiscated upon his entry to the hospital. After a few hours his doctor had agreed to give Sebastian a sedative. He had slept, but his dreams had not been peaceful.

He could hear several machines in the room around him beeping slowly. The sound was becoming harder and harder to block out. The doctors had said that there wasn’t anything really wrong with him physically. He displayed signs of shock and extreme stress, but none of the knife, bullet or claw wounds that he could remember getting inside STEM.

The doctors had insisted on keeping him for observation. Sebastian supposed that he could survive for a day or two inside Krimson General, as long as no-one attempted to transfer him to Beacon Mental Hospital.

Someone coughed in the bed next to Sebastian’s. He tried to ignore it, closed his eyes and attempted to summon the sight of Joseph’s face and the sound of his voice. He kept thinking about what the Lieutenant had said the day before, but there was no way that what Vankirk had told him could be the truth. Sebastian had years’ worth of memories of Joseph Oda. There was no way that they could all be fake.

When he closed his eyes Sebastian could still picture the other man’s perfectly arranged dark hair, the smile that always seemed to reach his eyes long before it made its way to his mouth, and those stupid fucking glasses of his; the ones that Sebastian had quite literally risked his life to get back. He could still hear Joseph too; the sound of gentle admonishments, the quiet laughter that he tried to suppress far too often for Sebastian’s liking, and the ever-so-soft sound of another person just breathing and existing in the same space as himself; the sort of sound that someone might never even notice until it was gone.

There was a lot about what had happened inside STEM that Sebastian was still trying to reconcile and make sense out of. There were still so many contradictions and mysteries, but Sebastian was sure that Joseph Oda wasn’t one of them. Perhaps MOBIUS had gotten to Vankirk, and somehow made him forget about Joseph’s existence? Before Beacon Sebastian would have said that such a thing was impossible, but now he wasn’t so sure.

He would just have to convince Jim that his version of events was the real one. It wouldn’t be easy. He knew that most of the things that had happened to him inside Beacon Mental Hospital would sound like absolute insanity if he attempted to relate them to someone else, but he would have to try.

Eventually James Vankirk himself walked into the hospital, holding a small bouquet of flowers in his hands, the bright yellow and pink of the blooms looking almost offensively bright and cheerful compared to the bleakness of the hospital and Sebastian’s mood. They were the first flowers or ‘get well’ gift that anyone had brought him, and Jim’s was the first visit that Sebastian had received. Anyone else who might have been inclined to visit him; Myra, Lily, Joseph, Kidman or Connelly; they were all gone now, dead or missing or apparently having disappeared from existence altogether. Still, Sebastian did his best to summon a smile for his Lieutenant.

“How are you doing Castellanos?” Vankirk said, sitting on the chair by Sebastian’s bed. It had stayed completely vacant until that moment.

Castellanos was it? That wasn’t a good sign. Vankirk only addressed him by his last name when he was upset.

“I’d be a hell of a lot better if I knew what happened to my partner,” Sebastian replied.

Vankirk sighed, sounding every bit as tired as Sebastian felt.

“Do you mean Juli Kidman or… what the hell was his name? Jacob?”

“Joseph!” Sebastian snapped. “Look, you can tell me if he’s dead. I can take it.”

Sebastian wasn’t sure that he _would_ be able to take it, but at least if Sebastian knew for sure that Joseph was dead then he could begin to grieve.

“I don’t know what to tell you Sebastian,” Vankirk said, already sounding a little impatient. “Because the person you’re talking about doesn’t exist today any more than he did last night.”

“That’s bullshit!” Sebastian shouted. “Of course he exists. He was the best man at my wedding. You were there!”

“That’s a little disrespectful towards Oscar, don’t you think?” the Lieutenant said. “Whose body we _have_ actually recovered by the way. You’d think you would be a little more worried about your actual best man turning up dead and less about some guy that doesn’t exist.”

Sebastian’s mind was immediately assailed with memories that he did not want to relive; Connelly charging towards him, his face covered in boils and distended veins, driven by the same insatiable hunger and rage that had gripped nearly everyone inside STEM; Connelly lying on the ground, his skull smashed open and his blood and brains leaking out onto the dusty ground thanks to a bullet that Sebastian had fired.

He opened his mouth to tell Vankirk that he had already known about Connelly’s death, but something stopped him. It occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t let the KCPD know that he had been the one to kill Connelly, especially not if they thought Sebastian was delusional, but that wasn’t what stopped him. Instead it was the memories that he had suddenly found himself recalling that stopped him short, because he seemed to have two distinctly different and conflicting sets.

In one set of memories he could clearly remember Joseph Oda, almost impossibly handsome in his suit as he stood beside Sebastian in his and Myra’s wedding photos. In the other it was Oscar Connelly that stood at his side, and the reserved and heartfelt speech that Joseph had made at the reception was replaced with a much bawdier one from Connelly, full of innuendo and embarrassing stories about Sebastian.

His head hurt again, and he clutched at it, groaning as he did. He wondered whether the nurses would be willing to give him something to lessen the pain. He might even be tempted to request another sedative if he wasn’t so terrified of the nightmares his own brain might conjure up while he was sleeping.

“Sorry buddy,” Vankirk said. “I know it must hurt. You and Oscar were always close.”

Vankirk thought that it was word of Connelly’s passing that had broken Sebastian and caused him to groan. If only his problems were limited to something as easy to define and deal with as simple grief. Grief he might be able to deal with. These confusing and conflicting memories were too much for him to deal with on top of trying to process everything else.

“You think you’re ready to talk about what happened?” Vankirk asked. “No rush. I mean, we’re going to need your statement eventually, but I think it’s more important that you rest up and try to recover whatever sanity you’ve still got left in that thick skull of yours first. You clearly went through a lot inside Beacon, but the last thing we want is for you to be raving about imaginary partners when your words are actually on record.”

And so Sebastian did his best to tell Vankirk everything; about Ruvik and MOBIUS and Doctor Jimenez and Kidman and all of the monsters that they had faced within STEM. He skipped over the exact nature of Connelly’s death, as well as a few other things. There was no reason to mention Joseph’s suicide attempt and embarrass him after all. During the entire story Lieutenant James Vankirk simply sat there by Sebastian’s side and listened quietly. He did not say a single word, but Sebastian could see the disbelief and disappointment on his face growing with every word that Sebastian said.

When he had finished James Vankirk let out a loud, long sigh that sounded as though it had been slowly building up the entire time Sebastian had been speaking.

“You know, if there was any proof of, well, of anything at all that you’re talking about then I might be more inclined to believe you,” Vankirk said. “As it is all we’ve got is a whole bunch of dead asylum patients and police officers, but you’re talking about monsters and secret societies and a whole bunch of bullshit that doesn’t make any sense at all. Where are the corpses of these monsters you killed? Why isn’t Krimson City completely destroyed?”

“I told you,” Sebastian replied. “We were taken to this other place; this… I don’t know; alternate reality or something. Weren’t you listening?”

“So then you’re willing to admit that it wasn’t real?” Vankirk asked.

“It was real,” Sebastian snapped. “It just didn’t happen inside Beacon. You won’t find any monster corpses or giant pools of blood, but there are definitely things that we need to follow up on; MOBIUS and the disappearances of Leslie Withers and Joseph Oda to name just a few.”

“Which we also don’t have any proof of,” Vankirk said. “Please Sebastian, I’m begging you; give me any sort of proof at all, otherwise I’m obligated to dismiss all of this as nothing more than the imaginings of a traumatized mind.”

Sebastian cursed beneath his breath and lay back against the hospital pillows. They were too soft, and did nothing to help ease his mind or get his thoughts in order.

“I’m warning you Sebastian,” Vankirk said. “Several officers dead, Kidman missing and you being the only survivor? This doesn’t look good.”

He knew what Vankirk was implying, and he didn’t appreciate it; not one bit.

“Not that I suspect you of anything,” Vankirk quickly added as soon as Sebastian glared in his general direction. “I just think that whatever happened inside Beacon was enough to send you half way to crazy. But other people are going to accuse you of all sorts of shit if you’re not careful, and having a story as nonsensical as the one you’re insisting on isn’t going to help your case. Give me something I can work with here.”

Of course there was no evidence inside Beacon. There wouldn’t be. In that moment however Sebastian realized that he might have evidence of at least one of the things Vankirk had dismissed as not being real. Joseph at least had not been a hallucination. He didn’t know why Vankirk was denying Joseph’s existence, but he was sure Joseph had been real, and Sebastian knew that he could prove it.

He reached for his phone and switched it on for the first time since he had been admitted to the hospital. He was immediately flooded with emails and messages; all of them from Vankirk and the bureau, a couple of them wishing him a swift recovery, but most of them just wanting to know what the hell had happened. He ignored them all and jumped straight to his photo folder.

“I can prove to you that I’m not making shit up about my partner at least,” Sebastian said.

He flicked through the photos, knowing that there would be at least a few of him and Joseph. There had to be. Joseph had never been a fan of photographs, but Sebastian had always found it fun to embarrass him, pulling him in for shared selfies and the like when they had wrapped up a successful case, or just taking photos of Joseph in general, partially to annoy his partner, but mostly to create a few mementos of what was undoubtedly one of the most important friendships he had ever had.

As he scrolled through the photos he became more and more worried however. There were far fewer photos than he had anticipated, and Joseph Oda wasn’t in any of them.

“Sebastian?” Vankirk asked.

“Hang on a second,” Sebastian said, frowning at his phone. Even if all photos of Joseph Oda had somehow disappeared from his phone, it didn’t mean he had no evidence.

He switched to his email application and searched for messages between himself and Joseph. He still came up with nothing at all, which was completely ludicrous. He could still remember the other man’s email address for god’s sake.

When a search through his emails gave him nothing he switched to Facebook; not that he used the site much at all, but surely there would be some sort of proof of Joseph’s existence there. There was nothing though; no ‘Joseph Oda’ listed in his friends or on any of his posts.

“No,” Sebastian muttered as he stared at the phone in his hands in disbelief. “No, this can’t be…”

“Sebastian?” Vankirk called again.

Sebastian had gotten so invested in the search that he had almost forgotten the Lieutenant was still there.

“This is… this is impossible,” he muttered, clutching his mobile phone too tightly. “They must have gotten to my phone somehow…”

Sebastian waited for the Lieutenant to accuse him of paranoia, but Vankirk didn’t say anything at all for what felt like a very long time. He just sat there and watched Sebastian with sad eyes.

“I had photographs of him,” Sebastian said, no longer knowing whether he was trying to convince Vankirk or himself. “Emails… We’d been partners for years. I have… I have all these memories of him. We solved so many cases together. He was real.”

He could still feel the weight of the other man as Sebastian dragged him to safety. He could still remember how worried he had been when the other man had taken a bullet or had almost fallen to his doom. He could still hear the sound of Joseph’s screams. It had been real.

“Somehow MOBIUS has gotten to my phone and erased all traces of him,” Sebastian said. “They had plenty of time to do it while I was unconscious.”

Vankirk let out another sigh. He had been doing a lot of that during this visit; far more than he usually did.

“We’re going to need you to see a shrink,” Vankirk announced as he got to his feet. “You understand that, right?”

Sebastian did not answer. He had a feeling that Vankirk would immediately dismiss anything that he tried to say in his own defense.

“In the meantime, get some rest,” Vankirk said. “Go home. Make peace with whatever the hell happened to you inside Beacon. We’ll take your statement only when you’re ready. It can wait.”

Sebastian did not bid the Lieutenant farewell. Instead he lay there, glaring at his mobile phone as though it had betrayed him.

He was not going insane. Or perhaps he was. If anyone had told him a story like the one he had just told Vankirk he would certainly assume that they had lost it. There were certain things he knew were true though; certain things that had happened before he had entered Beacon that had now apparently been erased from everyone else’s memory.

Joseph Oda was real, and Sebastian was going to find a way to prove it.


	3. Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

Over the course of the next day Sebastian smiled and took whatever medications his doctor recommended and was very careful not to mention anything about what had happened to him inside of Beacon. After all, he couldn’t find out what had really happened if he was stuck inside the hospital with everyone thinking he had gone completely insane.

He was released the next day, only after he had assured his doctor that he would take it easy and not do anything to ‘exacerbate his condition.’ Sebastian wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. It wasn’t as though he had a strained muscle or something that could heal with simple rest. He was trying to deal with his mind insisting on a version of reality that did not match the world around him. How the hell was someone supposed to recover from something like that? How the hell were you supposed to rest your mind?

Perhaps it would be easier if he actually had someone to talk everything through with. As it was his house seemed far too empty and lonely. He’d had days like this before Beacon too. Back then he would have just called Joseph, assuming he wasn’t having a completely awful day, and maybe tried to talk things through with him. If it had been a completely awful day then he would have bypassed the phone and headed straight for the liquor cabinet.

He needed a clear head today though, and Joseph’s number had disappeared from his phone along with everything else. Unfortunately Sebastian could not remember the other man’s number as well as he had remembered his email address, but he suspected that a phone call would prove to be useless. After all, the one and only email that he had attempted to send to the email address that he very clearly remembered as belonging to Joseph had bounced back with a message informing Sebastian that the email address he had sent it to was invalid.

It was becoming increasingly obvious to Sebastian that someone was trying to convince the world that Joseph Oda had never existed. The most likely candidate was MOBIUS, trying to cover up whatever it was that they had done to him; whether that just covered Kidman’s shooting him or something more nefarious. They had managed to erase Joseph’s existence from Sebastian’s phone and from the internet, but Sebastian was convinced that they wouldn’t be able to erase him completely.

There would still be evidence of Joseph in Sebastian’s home, or in the KCPD’s files. He just had to keep looking.

The first thing Sebastian checked were the photographs of his and Myra’s wedding that were displayed throughout the house. There was no sign of Joseph though; just himself and Myra, posing side by side or holding their guns up proudly.

At least there was no sign of Oscar Connelly in those photos either; no proof that what Vankirk had tried to tell him in the hospital about Connelly being his best man had any truth behind it, and no proof that Sebastian was the delusional mess that Vankirk and the doctors at the hospital clearly thought he was.

But there wouldn’t be, would there? Part of him could still remember asking Connelly to be his best man, not because the two of them were particularly close, but just because Sebastian couldn’t think of anyone to ask, and Connelly could at least be relied upon to make an entertaining speech at the wedding. Their friendship, Sebastian knew, had been based on getting the occasional drink after work, and a shared interest in basketball that no-one else in the KCPD could relate to. They had not been close enough for Sebastian to want him in the photographs.

He found himself sitting down in front of the small television in the living room. If he closed his eyes he could still remember sitting by Connelly’s side, drinking a couple of beers and watching a game together. It was always just the two of them. Myra didn’t even pretend to have an interest, and he had loved her for that.

That wasn’t right though. It had been Joseph that he had spent his weekends with, hadn’t it? They had watched hockey together, and Sebastian had teased him for being so fucking Canadian. Sebastian hadn’t even understood the rules at first, but Joseph had insisted, and before long he had been just as invested in the Stanley Cup results as Joseph had been.

There had been photos. There had been hockey games. There had been a hundred different memories of Joseph in his home and suddenly they had all disappeared.

MOBIUS had actually managed to get inside his home and remove all the evidence in there as well. It was terrifying to see the amount of power that the organization had; just as terrifying as anything that he had faced inside STEM.

They couldn’t have taken everything though. The photographs were obvious, but there were memories that he shared with Joseph that they absolutely could not take; mementos and gifts that were not immediately obvious as being remnants of their friendship but which would still be enough to assure Sebastian that he wasn’t going completely insane.

His head had started to throb as soon as he had sat down in front of the television, and as he got to his feet and tried to stumble through the living room and up the stairs the vague pain that had begun to grip him erupted into a stabbing pain that saw him falling to his knees before he was even halfway up the stairs.

He closed his eyes against the suddenly too bright light of day, and let himself lay down, pressing his face against the cool wood of the stairs. His heart began beating far too fast, some small part of his mind insisting that he couldn’t lay there. If he just lay there then he was vulnerable and something would surely attack him. At any second now he would feel the bite of a chainsaw as it plunged into his back, or the biting of a set of teeth that was far too human.

He told himself that there was no reason for him to be afraid. He was out of STEM and out of Beacon. He was safe.

But he didn’t feel safe, not with the whole house spinning round him, and not with Vankirk and probably everyone else in the Krimson City PD questioning his sanity.

He needed help. He reached out for the mobile phone that had escaped his pocket during the fall, and fumbled with the buttons, his lock screen and the information behind it suddenly far too difficult to read thanks to the migraine that coursed through his skull.

He just needed to call Joseph. Joseph would be over here as quick as he possibly could, with an aspirin and a cool water in hand, and he would help Sebastian up, and he would never complain, because Joseph was the kindest, most reliable partner a man could ever ask for.

There was no contact number for Joseph in his phone though; a fact that Sebastian had momentarily forgotten in his pain. When he remembered that he could barely stifle the sob that threatened to erupt from his throat.

Damn it all. He was so fucking pathetic, just lying there on the stairs. He didn’t need help, did he? He was stronger than that. He had gotten through Beacon on his own, hadn’t he?

He hadn’t been alone though. Then he’d had Joseph and occasionally Kidman. Now though, now he felt far more alone than he had even in the darkest depths of that terrifying hell-scape.

“Just breathe Seb,” Sebastian told himself. The nickname at least was one part of Joseph that no-one could take away. No-one but his partner had ever called him that.

He pushed himself up, and nearly fell backwards down the stairs, but eventually he righted himself, and then proceeded to practically drag himself the rest of the way up the stairs. He was a wreck, but he wasn’t so much of a wreck that he couldn’t climb a simple set of stairs.

He made it as far as his bed and sat down on top of it, letting his head rest in his hands.

He asked himself what Joseph would say if he saw Sebastian in such a miserable state. After all, Sebastian’s partner had always been far better at taking care of Sebastian than Sebastian had been at taking care of himself.

“A drink of cold water,” Sebastian muttered, remembering what he had imagined Joseph providing for him were his partner actually able to respond to Sebastian’s call for help, “and some painkillers. Should probably eat as well. Probably shouldn’t take painkillers on an empty stomach.”

He promised himself and the imaginary Joseph Oda life coach in his head that he would do precisely that as soon as he had completed his current mission.

There was proof of Joseph Oda’s existence right there in his bedroom if you knew where to look.

It had started out as nothing but a joke. Before his life had gone completely to hell Sebastian’s drug of choice had been caffeine; specifically coffee. Joseph had brewed a mean cup of coffee, and Sebastian had taken full advantage of that fact as soon as he had realized it. Sebastian couldn’t even count the number of times that he and Joseph had both sat there, freshly brewed coffees in hand as they worked on a case.

Sebastian’s intake had always been substantially higher than Joseph’s though, and while Sebastian was sure that his partner was actually mildly concerned about the amount of coffee he consumed, that worry mostly manifested itself as gentle teasing.

“You love coffee too much Sebastian,” Joseph would tease him. “This love affair with it really needs to stop, otherwise you’re going to end up making Myra jealous.”

The memory was almost enough to make Sebastian smile. Perhaps it would have if the very thought of Joseph Oda hadn’t turned into a bittersweet one these days, bringing with it equal parts worry and grief.

“You know what?” Joseph had said one day. “I’m going to get you coffee-themed cufflinks as a wedding gift if you keep this up. It only seems appropriate considering your love for it.”

He had said that particular line with a cup of coffee of his own hanging just beneath his mouth, and a sparkle in his eyes. Sebastian had assumed that it had been a joke until the day before his wedding, when Joseph Oda had actually made good on his threat.

Sebastian had opened the small jewelry case Joseph had presented him with to find a pair of silver cufflinks, each with a strip of mottled, dark-brown stained stone in the center.

“This is…” Sebastian muttered, barely able to believe that his best man had actually gone through with it.

“Coffee-glazed,” Joseph said. “Using a glaze made from actual coffee.”

“They’re actually pretty nice,” Sebastian conceded. It was an understatement. The cufflinks were perfect, which he admittedly should have expected. Joseph had picked them out after all.

“It took some effort,” Joseph told him, the twinkle in his eyes giving away the smile that hadn’t quite made its way onto his mouth just yet. “You wouldn’t believe how corny some of the other ones were. Count yourself lucky that you’re not getting married with actual coffee beans on your cuffs. Or little Starbucks cups.”

They weren’t usually the sort of friends to engage in physical shows of their affection, but in that moment Sebastian wrapped his arms around Joseph in the largest, warmest bear hug he could manage. Joseph had frozen up completely, and when Sebastian had pulled back his suit had been a little wrinkled, but neither of them had been able to stop themselves from smiling.

Sebastian had worn those cufflinks at the wedding, and at a couple of other formal events since then, each of them joyful ones. It had felt wrong to wear the coffee cuff-links (or coffee-links, as they had begun to refer to them after a few too many drinks at the reception) at any event where people would not be smiling.

Sebastian knew exactly where he had left them, and walked over to the drawer that housed his small collection of cufflinks, as well as his ties and watches. It was one of the few parts of his bedroom that he had managed to keep reasonably organized even after Myra’s disappearance.

All of his ties were there. His watches were there. The only pair of cufflinks that he could find however were the plain silver ones that he had bought for himself in preparation for the wedding. After all, a man couldn’t get married without cufflinks, could he? And no-one had bought him any.

Yet. There was a yet that was supposed to go on the end of that, wasn’t there? Joseph had bought him cufflinks. They just weren’t there.

There was no reason for anyone to have taken the cufflinks though. How could anyone that didn’t know Sebastian intimately know that Joseph had been the one to buy him those?

Sebastian could feel his heart beating faster and faster in his chest. This was impossible. Joseph had been real. The cufflinks had been real. He had very clear memories of Joseph giving him those cufflinks damn it! It couldn’t have all been in his head. It couldn’t have! He refused to believe it.

The wedding photographs themselves would prove it.

He ran back downstairs, this time taking them two at a time, and definitely not stumbling, even though the headache was still lurking at the back of his brain.

He just needed to look at his wedding photographs. That would prove it. He would look at his wedding photographs and they would show that he was wearing cufflinks of…

Plain silver.

In every single photograph of him and Myra and the rest of the wedding party, his cufflinks were plain silver. There was no sign of coffee-glazed stone.

“No,” he muttered. “No, that’s not…”

Joseph had been real, so why wasn’t there any sign of him anywhere in Sebastian’s life? Sebastian was absolutely sure that Joseph had been real. He couldn’t have made the other man up. He was sure that he _hadn’t_ made the other man up, just as he hadn’t made up any of the horrible shit that he had been through in Beacon, or STEM, or whatever the hell that god-awful place he had ended up in wanted to call itself.

It had been real.

‘Get some water, and some painkillers and get something in your stomach,’ that part of his mind that spoke with the same gentle tone as Joseph reminded him.

This time he listened to it.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to CharonsDanake, who left some very interesting and well thought out comments on the earlier chapters that totally made my week. Thank you so much, and I can't wait to show you and everyone else where this story is eventually going to end up.

CHAPTER FOUR

James Vankirk informed Sebastian that he was expected to take the next week or so off work, and that he was under absolutely no obligation to return to the KCPD until he was feeling better. What Vankirk didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him though, and the very next day Sebastian splashed some cold water on his face, had a double shot of coffee, and did whatever he could to make himself presentable and give the impression that he didn’t feel as though he was still trapped inside a nightmare, before striding back into the KCPD offices as though nothing had changed.

He wasn’t technically working after all, although considering he was still trying to track down a missing person there wasn’t all that much difference between his current mission and a normal work day. The only difference was this particular missing person was one that Sebastian cared about.

There had been no sign of Joseph Oda in Sebastian’s house, but that did not mean that there would be no evidence of his existence everywhere else. Sebastian was not quite ready to give up the search just yet, and so he showed up at the KCPD, bright and early and doing his best to look as though he was ready to get back to work.

Never mind the fact that he still hadn’t managed to get any more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time without the assistance of some pretty powerful drugs, or that his sleep was still filled with nightmares. He had already had some pretty terrible nightmares before entering Beacon, mostly to do with Myra’s disappearance and the fire that had claimed Lily’s life, but now his psyche had a whole assortment of new traumas that it could pull from; the city collapsing around him, his partner threatening to shoot himself, a white-robed man with burns covering half of his body and with a lethal vendetta, not to mention all of the horrific monsters he had faced.

He tried to put all of that behind him though. He tried to think of what Joseph would tell him to do in this situation, and just as with the water and painkillers in his home, it really did help.

‘Head up Sebastian,’ the imaginary Joseph would say. ‘You can do this. Just act like you’re supposed to be here. You’re a good detective. You can find me. I know that you can.’

As soon as Sebastian stepped into the KCPD office a dozen sets of eyes turned to stare at him. Sebastian wondered if he looked as terrible as he felt. He hoped not.

He couldn’t think of half of the names that went with the young faces he was seeing, and, dodging as many questions and well-wishes as he possibly could, Sebastian made his way to the missing person’s department, where he would hopefully feel more at ease, and finally be able to find some answers.

Stepping foot inside the missing person’s department did not help. Instead it just gave him the same sort of dreamlike déjà vu as being in a mall after closing time, or entering one of Krimson City’s abandoned subways. Everything just felt subtly wrong, as though reality had shifted around Sebastian and left him behind.

Kidman and Connelly’s desks both sat empty. In fact, the only police officer in the department at that moment was Corporal Marcellena Spellmeyer, who practically jumped when she saw Sebastian enter the room. He did not envy the woman. Her desk was piled high with paperwork. She had only been with the KCPD for a couple of years, and wasn’t really qualified to take on entire cases by herself. In fact, she was more of a glorified secretary than anything else, and yet she had probably been left fielding the entire department’s calls for the last couple of days.

“Hey Marcy,” Sebastian said as he forced himself to stride past her desk and towards his own office.

Connelly’s wife and two children stared almost accusingly from a photograph on the dead man’s desk. They were smiling in the photograph of course, but that didn’t stop Sebastian from feeling like the guiltiest man on the planet.

“It’s good to see you,” Sebastian said to Spellmeyer. Marcy was a wonderful woman, hardworking and friendly, but right at that moment Sebastian was finding it difficult to summon up enough enthusiasm to see her to sound anything even approaching sincere.

“It’s good to see you too,” Spellmeyer replied, and she at least managed to sound genuinely happy. “You know, the Lieutenant said that we shouldn’t expect to see you again for a few days. You sure you’re okay to be working again? I heard that some seriously messed up shit happened with that Beacon case.”

“Do I look like I can’t work?” Sebastian said, holding his arms out as if to offer a better view of his fully intact physical form. “I’m fine. It’s not like I’m injured.”

“But didn’t you end up in hospital?”

Sebastian couldn’t think of how he was supposed to reply to that, so instead he just shrugged and continued towards his office, drawn there almost as though something was pulling him in.

He knew what he expected to see on that door and within the office. After all, he could remember it as clear as day. He had so many memories in that office, many of them involving Joseph Oda. They had two desks set up in their office, the space shared almost as much as their cases.

He could now read the writing on the door leading into their office, and wished that he couldn’t. There should have been two names on that door. There was only one.

‘Detective Sergeant Sebastian Castellanos.’

Sebastian pressed a hand against the cold glass, feeling it form into a fist as he did. His eyes searched for any sign that another name had once sat beneath that one and then been erased, the tips of his fingers looking for any sort of sticky residue or small scratches in the glass, but there was nothing.

He was vaguely aware of Spellmeyer saying something to him, but she sounded as though her voice was coming from far away. He might as well have been on a completely different planet to Spellmeyer for all her words reached him. The hand that Sebastian had pressed to the glass in front of him formed into a fist, and then, despite every part of him that tried to insist that there was nothing waiting for him in his office except further heartbreak, he wrapped one hand around the door handle, and pushed it open.

There was only one desk, but after the single name on the door he had been expecting that. There was no coffee machine inside the office either, which, now that he was looking at it, seemed like an enormous oversight. How the hell had he ever functioned without easy and instant access to coffee? It seemed almost impossible, but then again, everything about Joseph Oda’s sudden disappearance seemed impossible, as did everything that had happened to Sebastian inside Beacon. Although, Sebastian Castellanos wasn’t sure that he was qualified to judge what was or wasn’t possible anymore, or, for that matter, whether or not something sounded at all sane.

The substantial lack of any sign at all of his partner’s presence in their shared office was disheartening, but it certainly wasn’t going to stop Sebastian from doing what he needed to do. He had a missing person to find after all, and wasn’t that exactly what he was normally paid to do?

He sat down behind his desk, contemplated the department-issued laptop that he knew rested in one of his drawers for all of a moment before deciding that there was no point. If someone was trying to erase all sign of Joseph’s existence then it would be far too easy for them to remove digital copies of any files. He would be better off looking for hard copies.

All of the reports and all of the paperwork that Sebastian found had been signed either by himself or by Kidman, which seemed wrong all by itself. He could have sworn that he had never been one to sit down and actually attend to paperwork. He had always passed it on to Joseph. His partner would roll his eyes and complain, but would always inevitably give in and attend to their paperwork, sometimes only after Sebastian promised to buy him one of those little pastries from the bakery down the road that Joseph liked so much. Sometimes Joseph would give Sebastian a tired smile half way through, and the two of them would end up sitting down and working through the pile together.

Sebastian could also remember long nights spent filling out paperwork on his own though; the quiet ticking of his watch; the lonely silence of a city already mostly asleep. It had been a good way to avoid Myra when their relationship had started to fall apart after Lily’s death.

Both memories could be true though, couldn’t they?

He moved on to the Internal Investigation report that had been filed against him only a month or so ago. Here, surely, there would be some sort of proof of Joseph Oda’s existence. After all, it had been Joseph who had gone to IA.

‘You know I didn’t report you because I was worried about your work Sebastian…’

Sebastian could remember the words as though it was yesterday. Hell, it wasn’t much longer than that come to think of it, even though it felt like far longer. Time had passed strangely inside STEM. Sebastian had initially assumed that they had been trapped in Beacon for days, and had been stunned when he had been informed that he and the others had only gone off the grid for several hours; just long enough for mid-afternoon to have turned into late-evening.

Sebastian could remember his reply to Joseph as well, with guilty, painful clarity.

‘What else is there?’

It seemed a cold and cruel thing to say now. What else is there indeed? He might have had Joseph when the question had been asked, but now he apparently didn’t even have his partner.

“What else is there?” he found himself asking the empty room as he pulled the folder containing the files related to the Internal Affairs Investigation out of its drawer.

He had only just placed the folder on his desk and opened it when the door to his office opened and James Vankirk strolled in.

“You’re not supposed to be here Sebastian,” Vankirk said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I thought I told you to stay at home and rest.”

Sebastian cursed under his breath. Spellmeyer must have ratted him out.

“I couldn’t,” Sebastian told him. It was the truth after all. “Not until I checked something.”

Vankirk narrowed his eyes at the folder on Sebastian’s desk.

“Is that the IA report?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sebastian said, flicking through the pages. There was, once again, no sign at all of Joseph Oda, and he flopped back into his chair, suddenly feeling completely exhausted.

“Why the hell are you pulling that out at a time like this?” Vankirk asked.

“Can I ask you something?” Sebastian said.

“Go ahead.”

“Who reported me to IA? What made them investigate me?”

Vankirk seemed to consider the question for a moment, which was a good sign. Sebastian knew that he wouldn’t get anywhere trying to insist that Joseph was real, but maybe if he forced other people to acknowledge the holes left behind by Joseph’s absence then they would see that Sebastian was right. Surely Vankirk would not be able to explain the Internal Affairs investigation. After all, who else had been close enough to Sebastian at the time to realize just how bad his alcoholism and depression had grown?

“Sebastian…” Vankirk murmured. “Please stop this.”

“Who was it?” Sebastian pressed.

“No-one,” Vankirk replied. “At least, it wasn’t one particular person. I tried to cover for you Sebastian, but your behavior prior to the IA investigation was far from exemplary.”

“But surely there was someone who reported me?”

“Why do you want there to be? Maybe you’d prefer that it was just me or Connelly that noticed you were having problems than face the truth?”

“And what truth is that?”

“That we could all see you were coming to work hungover! That there had been one too many complaints of you being overly aggressive in the course of your investigations for me to turn a blind eye anymore! That whatever you think you’re going to find in here, it doesn’t exist! Take your pick Sebastian.”

Sebastian cast his eyes around his office once more. There should be another desk over there, and over in that corner, the potted plant that Sebastian had bought for Joseph, and which Sebastian had ended up taking care of because, to their combined shock, Sebastian turned out to have much more of a green thumb than his partner.

“Look, I’ll head home soon, all right?” he told Vankirk. “There’s just one more thing that I need to check first.”

After all, Sebastian wouldn’t be the only one conscious of the empty space in the world where Joseph Oda should have been. His partner had a wife and child who would both be missing him. All Sebastian needed to was find them, and then at last he would have an ally; someone who would at least believe Sebastian and who would want Joseph found just as much as he did.

He pulled out his phone, unlocked the screen, and then stared at it, realizing he had absolutely no idea what name he was supposed to look up. Obviously the last name would be Oda, but when he tried to summon a first name, or even the memory of Joseph’s wife’s face, he drew a complete blank. When he tried to think of Joseph’s child instead he realized he couldn’t even remember whether Joseph had a son or daughter, let alone recall their face or name.

“What’s happening to me?” Sebastian whispered. He wasn’t sure who it was he thought he was addressing, but it certainly wasn’t Vankirk, despite the fact that he was the only one present who could actually give Sebastian a reply.

“I don’t know buddy,” Vankirk said, clapping a hand down on Sebastian’s shoulder. This time Sebastian was too tired and too confused to bother slapping it away, despite the fact that the touch was far from welcome.

“It’s too early for you to be back at work,” Vankirk said. “I told you to rest up.”

The words meant so very little to Sebastian in that moment.

Why couldn’t he remember Joseph’s wife and child? Their two families had spent so much time together. There had been barbeques on the weekend, and their wives had chatted together and their children had played together, at least until everything in Sebastian’s life had gone horribly wrong, so why couldn’t he remember a damn thing about them?

And there was still the fact that there was no evidence of Joseph in Sebastian’s home or in their office and no sign of the man or his family online or on Sebastian’s phone.

“I can’t have… I didn’t make him up.”

Sebastian found his eyes darting around the room; to the corner, where the coffee machine should have been, to the door, where he was sure there should have been a second name and finally to the window, where his memory could provide an absolutely crystal clear image of Joseph standing there, coffee in hand, gazing out the window as he thought.

“I couldn’t have made him up,” Sebastian muttered, letting his head fall forward into his hands. “I didn’t…”

His head began to pound again.

“Damn it,” Sebastian cursed, hearing the words emerge as a low, broken whisper.

His heart told him that Joseph had been real. After all, Sebastian had been able to touch him. He had felt the man’s blood slipping through his fingers and had killed so many of the haunted monstrosities inside STEM in the name of protecting him. Hell, he had journeyed back into the lair of a monstrous hound-like creature just to get the man’s glasses back. Joseph had to be real, otherwise the entire world was even more fucked up and cruel and pointless than he had thought.

Everything else; logic, the world around him and everyone that Sebastian talked to about the matter was trying to tell him something else though. Everything except Sebastian’s memories and feelings were telling him that Joseph had been no more real, or perhaps even less real than everything else inside Beacon. After all, people had died inside Beacon and left broken bodies behind. There was no evidence that Joseph Oda had ever existed at all.

“Oh god,” Sebastian muttered, suddenly finding it far too hard to breath. It was like waking up all over again; like that moment when his parents had sat him down as a child and told him that Santa Claus wasn’t real, only a thousand times worse, because he had never laughed or cried with Santa Claus and had certainly never risked his life for the jolly, red-suited man.

“Sebastian?” Vankirk said. Sebastian looked up to find his superior officer looking at him with obvious worry on his face. Sebastian got the distinct impression that it wasn’t the first attempt Vankirk had made to get his attention.

“Did I really make someone up?” Sebastian murmured. “I… I couldn’t have, could I? I’m not… I’m not that broken, am I?”

“You’re talking about that Joseph guy, right?” Vankirk asked.

“Yes,” Sebastian said, finding himself almost choking on that one simple word.

“Hey, listen Sebastian,” Vankirk began slowly. “This is probably a good thing.”

How the fuck was anything about this supposed to be good? Sebastian felt as though his entire world had turned sideways. He had very clear memories of a person that had possibly never existed and was still very much attached to said person. How was anything about his life ever supposed to be ‘good’ again?

“Sure,” Vankirk replied. “The fact that you’re willing to admit that some of it might not be real is a good sign. With time you’re probably going to recover and remember everything as it really happened. I mean, I’m no shrink, but I feel like that’s what this means, right?”

As though Sebastian was in any state at all to be able to answer such a question. He suddenly felt a pang of deep, desperate loneliness. He missed someone; needed someone that he would not be able to see again, no matter how desperately he wanted to. Rather than the closure that he had been hoping to find, it was more like he was losing Joseph all over again, the wound in his heart torn open anew. Hell, he didn’t even have a photograph to remember Joseph by, because it was looking more and more probable that none existed.

Sebastian realized that he was starting to hyperventilate. He had never really been one for panic attacks before, always choosing to drown any encroaching worry or grief with as much alcohol as he could get his hands on, and he was damned if he was going to break down or start crying in front of the Lieutenant of all people.

He got up from his desk and stormed towards the door.

“I need to leave,” he told Vankirk as he passed him.

“Sure thing,” Vankirk replied. “Contact me in a few days and let me know how you’re feeling.”

Vankirk did not tell Sebastian that he could call him and talk things through. Sebastian thought that the Lieutenant might have actually realized that such an offer would not be welcome.

* * *

When Sebastian returned home he discovered that his house felt far too large and empty, and yet at the same time it was almost suffocating. It had felt a little like that ever since Myra had disappeared, but he was sure it had never been this bad before. He’d always had Joseph at least.

But he hadn’t, had he? All of those memories of barbeques and hockey games and lovingly made coffees; they were nothing but phantoms.

How much of it had been real? How much had been fake? Why did Kidman have to turn out to be a MOBIUS member and disappear? He could have really benefited from having someone to talk to; not someone like Vankirk, who would keep spouting bullshit about recovery and ‘accepting reality’ when he didn’t have a fucking clue what Sebastian was going through, but someone who had actually been there, who might be able to explain what the fuck it was that was happening to Sebastian, and help him work out how much of what had happened to him had been real and how much of it had just been bullshit that his own mind had cooked up.

He just wanted it all to disappear.

When he turned on the television he discovered that the news was on, and of course it was covering the incident at Beacon Mental Hospital. Sebastian should have known that the press would have a field day with this particular case. There were too many deaths and unexplained disappearances for them to ignore it. Luckily it seemed like no-one had given Sebastian’s name to the press just yet, which was a small blessing at least. Sebastian wasn’t sure he would have been able to deal with nosy reporters on top of everything else.

He switched to another channel, where he was greeted by a hockey game of all things. It brought up too many memories, most of which were now of questionable authenticity, and he turned the television off after only a few seconds, pressing the power button down far harder than was really necessary.

He found his gaze drifting over to the liquor cabinet. He knew there was an old, mostly-full bottle of high quality whiskey tucked away in there. He had been saving it for a special event, but his life hadn’t exactly been full of those lately. It would be so easy to just drink himself into oblivion. Perhaps then the world would make sense once more, and even if it didn’t, Sebastian wouldn’t be conscious to have to deal with it.

He stood up, and found that he was halfway towards the cabinet before something stopped him. It was a simple thought, and probably a foolish one, but it helped in its own way.

Joseph wouldn’t want him to do it. Joseph, who probably wasn’t even real, and who, according to the rest of the world, had not actually reported Sebastian’s alcohol abuse to Internal Affairs, would not want Sebastian to get drunk.

Joseph might not have been real but at the same time Sebastian knew that Joseph would have been upset if Sebastian immediately resorted to drowning his worries with alcohol, and so, for that afternoon at least, he left the liquor cabinet untouched.

* * *

Sebastian lasted for another two whole days inside the too large and too empty house before he was ringing Vankirk up and begging to be allowed to go back to work. This time he didn’t mention Joseph or the things that he had seen inside Beacon, not wanting to give Vankirk any more reasons to doubt his sanity, and thankfully he was told that he was allowed to go back to work the very next day.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone that has been leaving feedback. Your comments and kudos keep me warm. :) 
> 
> Just a heads up that there's a bit of canon-typical ableism from Sebastian in this chapter in regards to his and others mental health.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sebastian tried to find comfort in the fact that the psychiatrist’s office did not at all resemble a hospital ward. Potted plants that Sebastian was reasonably sure were fake dotted the waiting room and continued on into the man’s office. The office itself was rather homely, with plenty of rich, thick carpet and walls that had been painted in what was probably the exact shade of blue-green that had been found to most reduce stress in patients.

There had been drawings in the lobby as well; of pastel coloured animals paired with saccharine motivational phrases.

‘Be gentle with yourself,’ a fox had told Sebastian as he waited to see Walter Harrington (Psy.D.). Sebastian had spent a good five minutes or so glaring at the fox while he waited for Harrington. Thankfully the pastel animal drawings did not follow him into Harrington’s office, even if the potted plants did.

Harrington himself had smiled at Sebastian and welcomed him warmly, shaking his hand and sending what Sebastian suspected was a genuine smile in Sebastian’s direction. Sebastian had not smiled back.

Harrington looked a little too much like a slightly younger, more overweight version of Doctor Marcelo Jimenez, which immediately put Sebastian on edge. There was also the fact that he didn’t particularly want to be seeing Doctor Walter Harrington.

It had been a requirement of his returning to work however, and so Sebastian had conceded.

“I tried to make a case for you,” Lieutenant Vankirk had told Sebastian. “Tried to tell them that you were going to make a full recovery with time, but Wright insisted. You know how pedantic they can get over in Police Psych.”

Ah yes. Dwayne Wright of Police Psychological Services. Sebastian had dealt with the man once before; during the Internal Affairs investigation that had not, after all, been instigated by his partner Joseph. Sebastian was sure that Wright hated him, and had been not so secretly searching for a way to boot Sebastian off the force permanently.

“So yeah,” Vankirk had said, slapping Sebastian on the back, somehow still missing the fact that Sebastian did not really need or want his particular brand of physical reassurance. “We’re going to need you to attend mandatory counselling for a while. This sort of thing is pretty typical after a shit show like Beacon. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

Sebastian worried. Vankirk still hadn’t taken Sebastian’s official statement regarding the events in Beacon. Sebastian was reasonably sure he was waiting to find out what Harrington had to say about Sebastian’s mental health before he conducted any sort of conversation with Sebastian that would have to stay on record at the KCPD.

“Are you enjoying being back at work?” Harrington asked once he and Sebastian had gotten the formalities and introductions over with. “The Lieutenant told me you were practically begging to be allowed back on the force.”

“I haven’t been enjoying shit,” Sebastian replied, being perfectly candid and honest about the manner.

The days that he had spent alone in his house had been an absolute nightmare; not one at the same level as the events in Beacon, of course, but still a nightmare. When his mind wasn’t busy taunting him with horrifying memories of the monsters that he had faced it turned instead to old traumas; the fire and Myra’s disappearance, or reminded him of the partner that had never existed, but which he still loved and missed. He had been struggling to find any point of normalcy or comfort upon which he could latch. Beacon had taken the last remnants of stability in his life away from him, leaving his heart feeling like nothing more than an empty husk.

“Really? So then you weren’t as desperate to get back to work as I’ve been led to believe?” Harrington said, smiling at Sebastian in a manner that Sebastian found almost disturbingly convincing. “You only took four days off for psychological recovery. You didn’t want to spend more time than that resting up?”

“Rest up?” Sebastian snapped. “How the hell am I supposed to rest up?”

“You tell me,” Harrington said.

Sebastian crossed his arms in front of his chest and refused to look Harrington in the eye, despite how hard the other man was trying to engage Sebastian in doing exactly that.

Harrington exhaled loudly and sat back in his chair.

“My apologies Detective,” he said, “but I know very little of your case. Your Lieutenant informed me that you were connected to the slaughter at Beacon Mental Hospital, but the KCPD hasn’t exactly made the details of that case public yet. Of course, you’re under no obligation to tell me anything. If you wish to remain silent then I will not force you to talk, but we’re going to keep seeing one another until I am sure that you have come to grips with whatever traumas you experienced inside Beacon, and that’s going to be rather difficult for me to do if you refuse to tell me anything.”

Sebastian had never really had a problem with shrinks before. He had never had reason to, but the last thing he wanted now was for another person to tell him that everything that had happened at Beacon had just been inside his head.

“You’re going to be stuck with me for at least a couple of sessions,” Harrington said. “We might as well make use of that time. The KCPD is paying my fees after all. It’s not every day you’re offered free psychological counselling.”

Harrington was being so damned rational, and making so much sense that Sebastian was having a hard time staying angry with him.

“We don’t have to talk about Beacon right away,” Harrington told him. “We can lead up to that slowly if you’d prefer.”

Sebastian wondered if perhaps he’d judged Harrington too harshly. After all, it wasn’t the shrink’s fault he reminded Sebastian of one of the most morally bankrupt men he had ever met, and Sebastian _had_ been wishing he had someone to talk to.

“You… you probably deal with crazy people all the time, right doc?” he asked Harrington.

“I would prefer not to use that particular word,” Harrington replied with only a slight wince, “but I do deal with neuro-divergent persons on a regular basis, yes.”

“It’s just…” Sebastian began, finding that he did want to open up to Harrington despite himself, but had absolutely no idea where he should begin. “If I tell you what I went through inside Beacon, you’re going to think I’ve gone completely insane. Everyone that I talked to at the KCPD did.”

“You might be surprised,” Harrington replied. “Perhaps I can help you make sense of it all. Sometimes what seems like insanity at first proves to be no more than our brain’s way of processing something that would be far too traumatic for us to deal with should we try to process it normally. After a particularly traumatic incident such as the one that you went through in Beacon I would be more worried if you had emerged completely unscathed.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about the case,” Sebastian replied, narrowing his eyes at the psychologist.”

Harrington actually smiled at that, and Sebastian saw him make a note in the small book that he had been holding. Sebastian had a feeling said note probably included the words ‘suspicion’ or perhaps ‘paranoia’.

“I only know what I’ve seen on the news,” Harrington told him. “The latest report puts the death toll at over forty. I’m afraid it doesn’t take a detective to deduce that such an event would be horribly traumatic.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sebastian replied, rubbing a hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved since getting out of Beacon, afraid that he would accidentally cut himself a few too many times with how his hands had been shaking, and the stubble that had grown in since then scratched at his fingers.

“So, Detective,” Harrington began. “What would you like to talk about? Where should we begin?”

Sebastian thought about it for only a moment before answering.

“The first thing I remember was driving in the car, and getting an alert over the radio,” he said, beginning the first of what ended up as a longer series of sessions with Harrington than he ever would have anticipated.

* * *

“So, how are the meetings with your shrink going?” Vankirk asked Sebastian when the two of them met for coffee a couple of weeks later. Sebastian still hadn’t been given the go-ahead to return to work.

“Fine,” Sebastian replied.

* * *

“These monsters that you describe,” Harrington said during a moment of relative silence from Sebastian. “I think you’ll find that they’re actually very easy to explain.”

“They are?” Sebastian asked. They had seemed anything but explainable to him at that time, at least in anything but dream logic.

“Of course,” Harrington said. “You could not fathom the thought that one person would be capable of inflicting the sort of violence and horror that you witnessed inside Beacon upon his or her fellow man, and so your subconscious invented these monsters which could then be held responsible for what happened.”

“You’re suggesting that perhaps it was easier for me to believe these monsters had killed everyone then face the truth?”

“That is precisely what I’m suggesting, yes.”

* * *

“And that whole Joseph Oda problem?” Vankirk asked as Sebastian added far too many packets of sugar into his long black.

“It’s not a problem,” Sebastian lied.

* * *

“I just miss him so much,” Sebastian said. Not for the first time in Harrington’s office he found himself close to tears while recounting what had happened. “He’s not even a real person but losing him feels just…”

He wasn’t sure he could find the words for it, at least not without breaking down completely, and he refused to let himself go that much during his sessions with Harrington.

“So you’re willing to admit that this partner that your mind conjured up wasn’t real?” Harrington prodded gently, but only after giving Sebastian enough time to take a deep breath and center his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Sebastian replied. “He felt so real; perhaps more real than anything else I faced in there. I can still feel the weight of him on my shoulders as I dragged him to safety or helped him stand up. His blood on my hands… the worry that I felt when I thought he was dying… But out here, there’s no evidence at all that he ever existed. Logic and everything that I see and everything anyone says about him tells me that he couldn’t possibly have been real, but... well… I’m having a hard time getting my heart to catch up with my head.”

“That I can very much understand,” Harrington said. “Your fixation with your partner might be the easiest part of all of this to understand.”

Sebastian nodded in agreement, and gazed over at one of the plants in the corner. It had flowered since he had last been in the psychiatrist’s office. So that one had been real after all, had it?

“I was in desperate need of a friendly face in there,” Sebastian muttered. “So I made an ally up out of thin air.”

“Something like that.”

Sebastian sighed and rubbed at his forehead. He could feel another headache coming on.

“I suppose it makes sense,” he conceded.

After all, Joseph had probably been the safest, most perfect partner Sebastian could have possibly imagined. He had been the polar opposite of Sebastian; responsible and orderly in every way that Sebastian wasn’t, patient and willing to support Sebastian, even when he wasn’t at his best. He had been kind and caring, and despite all of that, still the sort of man Sebastian could imagine having fun with on the weekend.

Something was still bothering Sebastian though.

“But why would I make up a partner that was suicidal?” he asked.

After all, the amount of time that he had spent in Beacon protecting or saving his partner had been uncomfortably high. Sebastian had been so worried about Joseph. Nothing about that seemed particularly comforting.

“You may not believe me when I say this,” Harrington began with a wry grin on his face that Sebastian found himself trusting despite everything that said he shouldn’t, “but I think, Sebastian Castellanos, that you are actually in possession of a very nurturing personality and a strong paternal instinct. Your subconscious gave you someone that you could care for, knowing on some level that it would be easier for you to stop worrying about your own situation if you could instead worry about someone else.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Sebastian conceded. He wasn’t entirely convinced, but it made more damn sense than anything that he had come up with over the past few weeks.

* * *

“You know something Castellanos?” Vankirk said as they sat down at a table together. “I’m still worried about you buddy. These last couple of weeks you’ve been… I don’t know. Different. I know it must be rough without Kidman and Connelly around to talk to…”

‘And Joseph,’ Sebastian’s mind added, which wasn’t particularly helpful.

“Counselling is helping though, right?”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian replied. “It might be.”

* * *

“You’re going to have to accept that most of what you claim happened wasn’t real Sebastian,” Harrington said, sounding as though he was beginning to lose patience with Sebastian. “Otherwise I’m afraid that there’s very little I can do.”

“What the hell happened then?” Sebastian asked. “If I didn’t face Ruvik and the Keeper and that Laura-thing then what the hell was it that killed all of Beacon’s patients? Why did four city blocks worth of people suddenly fall unconscious? If Juli Kidman didn’t sneak off with her fucking secret society then what the hell happened to her!?”

Sebastian realized that not only was he shouting; somewhere in the middle of his rant he had jumped to his feet and was now looming over Harrington. The psychiatrist for his part was still acting remarkably calm and unaffected by Sebastian’s outburst, despite the fact that Sebastian was practically interrogating him the same way Sebastian would a murder suspect.

Harrington took a deep breath, steepled his fingers, and then looked Sebastian right in the eye.

“I can’t give you all the answers Sebastian,” he replied. “I can only give you the advice that you need to find those answers for yourself. I can give you the tools to remove the veil you have placed in front of your eyes, but I cannot tell you what lies beyond it.”

Harrington was silent for a long time then. Sebastian had a feeling the psychiatrist was waiting for him to fill the silence, but Sebastian could not think of any words to say.

“If you would like my advice,” Harrington eventually said. “It may be time to consider a stronger form of medication.”

* * *

“So,” Vankirk said, downing half of his coffee in one go. “Connelly’s funeral is scheduled for this Saturday. Are you going to be there?”

Sebastian stared down at the cup of coffee he had ordered. It wasn’t as good as the ones Joseph used to make.

“I don’t think anyone would blame you if you decided to skip it,” Vankirk continued. “Hell, after what you went through I think we’re all surprised that you’re back at work or interacting with the rest of society at all.”

Sebastian glared down at his coffee as though it had been responsible for everything that had gone so horribly wrong with his life over the past few weeks.

He imagined that the ghost of Connelly was staring back up at him from the depths of his coffee. No-one else might believe it, but Sebastian had known that he had been personally responsible for the death of Connelly. No matter that the official autopsy listed the death as a brain hemorrhage, Sebastian and Connelly’s ghost both knew the truth; Connelly had died once when entering STEM, and had died a second time when Sebastian had shot a bullet into his skull at almost point blank range.

“I’ll be there,” he told Vankirk. He owed Connelly that much at least.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: excessive amounts of whump, references to mental health issues, depression and suicide. Please consume responsibly.

Sebastian attended Connelly’s funeral and felt like an imposter the whole time. The service was touching and perfectly tasteful, and thankfully no-one expected Sebastian to say anything, despite the fact that Oscar Connelly and Sebastian had supposedly been friends for close to ten years, and Connelly had apparently been Sebastian’s best man.

The church was full of Connelly’s extended family, and plenty of friends that Sebastian didn’t even recognize. Unlike himself it seemed that Oscar Connelly had been capable of maintaining lasting friendships and a social life outside of work.

It was a beautiful sunny day. If the weather had any sense of dramatic timing at all then it would have been raining, but instead the sun shone down perfectly throughout the whole proceedings.

Sebastian felt as isolated there as he did in pretty much every part of his life these days. There were other cops there of course; Connelly had been liked by his peers just as much as his friends and family; and Sebastian spent a little time talking to Vankirk and a couple of others, before making his way over to Oscar’s wife Olivia and giving her his condolences.

It all felt so fake though, and he wondered how Connelly’s many fans would react if they knew that Sebastian had been the one to take him away from them all. Probably not favorably. Even if he tried to explain to them all that by the time Sebastian had shot him Connelly had been little more than a ravenous zombie, the best he could probably expect was one of those pitying, slightly worried looks that he had been receiving from too many people of late, particularly when he attempted to describe anything that had happened to him inside Beacon.

He found himself standing alone as they lowered Connelly’s body into the ground. Sebastian had shaved for the event, and was mildly proud of the fact that he had only nicked himself twice, but he knew he looked like a wreck. He still wasn’t sleeping well. At least here the redness of his eyes and the dark rings beneath them wouldn’t stand out so much, even if he hadn’t gained them simply in the process of mourning Connelly like many of the people standing around him.

The priest presiding over the ceremony droned on, while Sebastian found his mind racing. Part of his mind was still trying to reconcile what had happened to him inside Beacon and make sense of it all, as it always seemed to be these days.

Connelly was bugging him (not the fact that Sebastian had killed him; although that was a definite problem too) but the way he fit into the whole puzzle. Doctor Harrington’s theory had always seemed to be that Sebastian had hallucinated most of the monsters and mysteries inside Beacon as a way of processing whatever it was that had really happened to him. If Sebastian ignored half of what he remembered and squinted at what memories were left then that sort of made sense.

Connelly didn’t make sense though. If Connelly and so many of Beacon’s patients had died from a brain hemorrhage then why the hell would Sebastian’s mind come up with new deaths for them that were all so much worse? Having Connelly turn into an undead, zombie-like creature that Sebastian had needed to kill in self-defense seemed infinitely worse than the other officer simply dropping dead. What the hell did someone dying from a brain hemorrhage even look like? Sebastian didn’t know, but he was willing to bet that it wasn’t nearly as traumatic as the boil-covered, ravenous beast that Sebastian had witnessed just prior to Connelly’s death.

A door had been opened in his mind, and now that it had been opened, it was incredibly hard to shut it again. No matter how he looked at it, Harrington’s theories did not make sense to him anymore. Sure, they had seemed pretty logical at first, but there was so much that didn’t add up.

Sebastian hadn’t made up any of the patients inside Beacon Mental Hospital. He knew that much. With a little bit of unauthorized digging when he was supposed to be working on other cases, he was able to find records of Leslie Withers in Beacon’s patient records. Digging a little further gave him employment records for Marcelo Jimenez.

With a little extrapolation Sebastian had even found records of a murderer that he suspected had been the sadist with the chainsaw that he had faced down several times while in Beacon. There was no record of Ruvik, but considering his use of hospital resources had not been particularly legal or ethical, Sebastian had been anticipating a cover-up where the psychopathic scientist was concerned.

A bit of off-duty digging gave him a bit more to work with in regards to Ruvik. The Victoriano family had been prominent members of Krimson City society after all, and even MOBIUS could not completely erase them from the city’s records. The fact that Sebastian was only able to find a few records of them at all made him even more suspicious. Someone had clearly wanted to remove as much of their story from the public record as they possibly could, and why the hell would they do that unless they had something to hide?

Over the next week or so he came to a conclusion; everyone that he had met inside Beacon had been real. Perhaps in the outside world they hadn’t been exactly what STEM had turned them into, but they had all existed in some form. Perhaps the monsters that Ruvik had been able to call into being had never truly existed, but every single human or undead that Sebastian had faced had once been a real, living person; a psych patient or someone who had been living close enough to Beacon to be caught up in the blast. Jimenez and his brother had been real, Leslie had been real, and Ruben Victoriano had most definitely been real.

Sebastian was willing to accept that he had never had a partner named Joseph Oda, but that did not mean that Joseph Oda had never existed at all. It gave him hope, and something to investigate, and he threw himself into his investigation with renewed vigor.

He didn’t tell anyone what he had been investigating of course. Vankirk would have probably thrown a fit and insisted that Sebastian take more time off. Sebastian knew that he couldn’t give up though. If Joseph Oda was really out there somewhere, then Sebastian was going to find him.

* * *

“What are you working on?”

Sebastian jumped. He hadn’t realized that Vankirk was standing right next to him until the man had spoken. He quickly changed tabs on his computer so that his screen displayed something connected to his actual job. He suspected that he hadn’t been quick enough however to stop Vankirk from spotting what had been on his screen.

“Missing person case,” Sebastian replied. It was even true. There might not be an official KCPD file, but this person was still missing.

“Well I should hope so,” Vankirk joked. “Considering that’s your fucking job.”

Sebastian caught his superior officer glancing at the screen, and wondered exactly how much the other man had seen.

“Psych services wanted me to talk to you,” Vankirk said, sitting on a corner of Sebastian’s desk. “They wanted to know whether or not you would consider changing your official report of the events inside Beacon.”

“Why?” Sebastian said, frowning up at Vankirk. “What part do they want changed?”

“I don’t know,” Vankirk replied, sounding a little annoyed. “Maybe all of it? I listened to the recording Sebastian. You sound like a crazy person. Being teleported to other locations and fighting giant monsters and watching the whole city collapse? I thought you were starting to do better, but I was clearly wrong.”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from me,” Sebastian replied. “I told the whole story exactly how I experienced it.”

He hadn’t mentioned shooting Connelly, and hadn’t lingered too long on his interactions with Joseph, but apart from that he had told the KCPD everything and had answered all of their questions as best as he could, not that any of them would listen to him.

“You’re still seeing the shrink right?” Vankirk asked.

“Of course,” Sebastian replied. “It’s been very helpful to talk things through with someone.”

“Right,” Vankirk said, pushing himself off the desk and getting back to his feet. “Well, if you do decide to change your story, just let us know, all right?”

“Sure thing,” Sebastian replied.

Vankirk left Sebastian in peace, although Sebastian caught him glancing back at Sebastian’s computer before he left.

Sebastian let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding in, and as soon as Vankirk had left the room, he switched back to the tab that he had been looking at when Vankirk had entered the room.

The screen displayed a page from an old newspaper than had taken Sebastian a long time to uncover. Taking up the largest part of the screen was a small, seemingly insignificant story that Sebastian had zoomed in on.

The headline simply read ‘Couple Killed in Horrific Car Crash.’

* * *

“I have a theory,” Sebastian told Harrington the next time he visited the psychiatrist’s office.

“Yes?” Harrington asked, sitting back in his chair and watching Sebastian closely.

“I think you’re half right,” Sebastian said. “I think I was so damned lonely and confused inside Beacon that I made up a partner who never existed.”

“It’s good to hear that you’re starting to accept this,” Harrington said, “however, I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s going to be a ‘but’ attached to this revelation of yours.”

“You’re right,” Sebastian admitted, grinning proudly before folding his arms in front of his chest. “I have accepted the fact that I never had a partner named Joseph Oda, _but_ that doesn’t mean that Joseph Oda never existed at all, right?”

“Pardon?”

Sebastian was growing quite excited now. Surely Harrington would see how much his new theory made sense.

“I was all alone in there,” Sebastian explained. “I needed an ally. Maybe the real Joseph Oda was all alone in there too, so we ended up in this shared delusion where he was a police officer as well and the two of us were partners.”

Harrington was completely silent. Sebastian had grown used to the other man’s presence over their weeks of counselling, and even found himself relaxing while in his company. He was finding it hard to relax beneath Harrington’s current gaze however. Sebastian had a feeling, for the first time, that Harrington was regarding Sebastian with the same callous and impersonal intent as a scientist studying a specimen beneath a microscope.

“Joseph Oda might be real,” Sebastian continued, “and with a bit of work I might be able to track him down.”

“Have you…” Harrington began, before pausing to clear his throat. “Have you actually made any attempt to find him?”

“You bet your ass I have,” Sebastian replied. “I’ve even come up with something.”

“You have?”

Sebastian couldn’t help but notice that Harrington was starting to look concerned, and Sebastian wasn’t sure that his concern was only for Sebastian’s mental health.

“It’s not much,” Sebastian replied. “Just one mention of the name in an old newspaper; a report of a man and a woman dying in a car crash and leaving their son, ten year old Joseph Oda behind. The dates and locations match up to what I already know and while the first and last names are common individually the combination of the two together is surprisingly rare.”

Sebastian had intended to say more, but the sound that emerged from Harrington in that moment; something caught halfway between a sigh and a groan, stopped him.

“I’m worried for you Sebastian,” Harrington said. “This obsession isn’t healthy. I’m not sure this investigation of yours is going to help you at all.”

“Well, with respect, I disagree,” Sebastian replied. “Even if I find out for sure that Joseph Oda is dead, then at least I’ll be able to grieve properly for him and move on, not to mention I’ll finally have some sort of proof that at least some of what I experienced inside Beacon was based in reality.”

Harrington remained silent.

“You’ll see,” Sebastian insisted. “I’m going to find him.”

* * *

Sebastian was sitting at his desk, two days after his most recent appointment with Harrington. He stared at the file in front of him, trying to get his mind to focus, but it was getting harder and harder to think of anything that wasn’t in some way related to Beacon.

He told himself this was important. This missing woman had family and friends who were probably desperate for news of her. His gut told him that the woman in question was already dead. That was how most of his cases seemed to end, if they ended at all. Far more often than that, whichever missing person he was investigating simply remained missing. There was only so much that they could do, after all.

Beneath the case file sat other documents; ones that he wanted to look at even less than the documents pertaining to model Carmina Rivera’s disappearance; the resumes and interview transcripts for potential new hires or transfers for the KCPD’s missing person’s department. With Connelly and Kidman both out of the picture and Sebastian hardly at his peak, they were in desperate need of more personnel. Sebastian had not been the one to sit down with the applicants and actually conduct the interviews; that had been Vankirk’s responsibility, but Vankirk had given Sebastian the applications to look over at least. Sebastian wasn’t sure that he really cared. No matter who Vankirk hired they would not be Myra or Joseph or Juli Kidman, and would therefore be inadequate as far as Sebastian was concerned.

He had found himself staring at one of the photos of Carmina Rivera for what must have been ten minutes straight when the door to his office opened and Vankirk practically barged in, looking as joyful and excited as a kid at Christmas.

“You are not going to believe this Sebastian,” Vankirk said. “I found your man.”

“What?” Sebastian muttered, wondering whether Vankirk was talking about the disappearance of Rivera or one of the potential new hires.

“Well, when you got out of Beacon you seemed seriously insistent that this partner of yours; Joseph Oda, had actually existed, so I’ve sort of been keeping an eye out for the name.”

Sebastian immediately grew more alert, the plain manila folder that Vankirk had brought into Sebastian’s office suddenly of much more interest to him.

“Don’t get too excited just yet,” Vankirk said, pulling out a piece of paper from the folder and handing it to Sebastian. “It’s not all good news.”

Sebastian clutched the piece of paper in both of his hands, barely able to believe his eyes. There, right in front of him, on the top right corner of the page was a black and white photo of the partner that he had gone through hell with. His hands shook as he stared at the paper. Sebastian could only hope the shaking wasn’t so bad that Vankirk had noticed it.

“That’s him right?” Vankirk asked. “The Joseph Oda that you were talking about?”

Sebastian nodded slowly, feeling tears welling up behind his eyes. There, right on the paper in his hands was the same tightly pressed mouth, the same sharp eyes and perfectly styled hair, and even the same stupid fucking glasses that he remembered.

“It’s him,” he muttered, unsurprised to hear that his voice was far more croaky and broken than it usually was.

Vankirk’s warning had been apt of course. The news was far from good. The piece of paper in Sebastian’s hands was part of a patient record for Beacon Mental Hospital. He scanned the notes quickly, taking in everything that he read and trying to reconcile it with the memories that he had of Joseph; strong, confident and brilliant Joseph.

‘Extreme paranoia,’ the paper in Sebastian’s hands informed him. ‘Occasional delusions. Possible undiagnosed schizophrenia. Suicidal tendencies.’

According to the paper in front of him, Joseph Oda had been institutionalized for his own safety, his psychiatrist concerned that leaving him unsupervised might lead to self-harm or another attempt to kill himself.

It was easier to believe than Sebastian would have liked. After all, he could still very much remember the sight of Joseph standing right in front of Sebastian and pressing a gun to his own head, threatening to shoot himself.

“You ever have the urge to just jump,” Joseph had said during a quiet moment, “when you’re on a high place or the subway rolls by? Imagine if you had that urge for a minute straight, then two minutes…”

Sebastian hadn’t really listened to him then. Perhaps he should have.

He continued to scan through the rest of Joseph’s file. Part of him was already wondering whether Beacon would consider releasing Joseph into Sebastian’s care. Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to take care of him, would it? Surely they would both be better off together. They could take care of one another and maybe it wouldn’t be exactly how Sebastian imagined it, but he would have his partner back. Everything would be okay.

“Sebastian,” Vankirk said, his voice perhaps louder than it needed to be. Sebastian realized then that it hadn’t been the first time Vankirk had attempted to get his attention.

“Where is he?” Sebastian asked.

The sorrowful expression that appeared on Vankirk’s face in response to Sebastian’s question made Sebastian’s heart lurch uncomfortably in his chest. The expression was not one which gave him hope.

“I’m sorry Sebastian,” Vankirk said as he handed the rest of the folder over to Sebastian. “But he’s dead.”

Sebastian suspected it would have hurt less if Vankirk had just plunged an arm straight into Sebastian’s chest and torn his heart out with his bare hands.

Vankirk continued to speak, but to Sebastian he sounded very far away. His entire world had shrunk down to the pieces of paper in his hands, and the sight of Joseph Oda’s face staring up at him. He had thought that he was used to grief by now. He should have been used to it. Heavens knew they were acquainted with one another well enough. He had been wrong.

“He was one of the mental patients who died in Beacon,” Vankirk continued. “He was fairly recently admitted, and didn’t really have much in the way of family searching for him, so it took us a while to ID the body.”

Sebastian searched for something else to say. He should ask how Joseph had died, but he knew the answer that he would get; brain hemorrhage, just like the rest of them. Everything else that he might want to know was right there on the page in front of him.

Joseph Oda continued to stare up at him from one corner of the page, no sign at all of the brightly shining eyes that had featured so strongly in so many of Sebastian’s memories of the man.

“This is something though, right?” Vankirk said. “You’re not completely crazy, or at least not where this particular mystery is concerned. I seriously doubt we’re going to find anything quite so concrete for those monsters you were talking about, but at least this is a start, right?”

Sebastian did not respond. He did not know how to, and suspected that no matter what he tried to say next, all that would emerge from his mouth would be a strangled sob.

Vankirk finally seemed to notice that he wasn’t going to get anything coherent out of Sebastian any time soon, and took a step back from the detective’s desk, leaving Joseph Oda’s file behind.

“Tell you what,” he said. “You hold onto that for the next few days. Investigate this guy to your heart’s content. Perhaps it can help you process this shit. If you need to take another day or two off, you just let me know, although I’m not sure we’ve ever allowed someone to take compassionate leave for an imaginary partner before.”

Sebastian barely registered the quip.

* * *

Sebastian did not return home, or at least not immediately. It wasn’t as though he was capable of doing much more than staring blankly at the files that Vankirk had provided him with, but he just couldn’t bring himself to get up and leave. He probably shouldn’t have been allowed to drive anyway, he realized.

Eventually he dragged himself to the car and drove himself home, feeling completely numb the entire way.

Finding out what had happened to Joseph should have brought him closure, exactly as Vankirk had suggested, but it hadn’t. The only thing that it had brought was more grief, and far more guilt than Sebastian could have ever suspected.

Because no matter how he looked at it, Joseph Oda’s fate had been completely Sebastian’s own fault. The poor man had already been struggling, and then Sebastian had come along, so fucking desperate for companionship that he had pulled a man so sick in the head as to be suicidal into some cheap fucking fantasy in which the two of them had been partners. Sebastian was sure that Joseph Oda had only gone along with it because of his mental health issues. Along with the paranoia and delusions Joseph’s file had mentioned that the man had been unhealthily susceptible to the whims and suggestions of others.

And Sebastian had pulled him away from whatever safety the ruins of Beacon might have offered him, dragging him through danger and putting his life at risk and ignoring all of the warning signs that should have told him Joseph Oda was not doing nearly as well as he should have been. Joseph Oda had been right. He had definitely not been okay, especially not with Sebastian dragging him through hell.

It was entirely possible that if Sebastian had never come along then Joseph Oda might have survived Beacon. As it was he had been shot by Kidman in a conflict that he’d had absolutely no real reason to become involved with.

Joseph Oda, whoever he had been in life, was now dead, and it was all Sebastian’s fault.

Just like everything else in his fucked up life. He hadn’t been able to protect Lily. He had driven Myra away. He had outright killed Connelly, and he might as well have pulled the trigger and shot Joseph himself as well for all the difference it made.

Sebastian managed to make it all the way home and into his living room before the tears came. They did not fall silently or easily. Instead he found himself screaming, choking on the sounds that emerged loud and ugly from his throat. He wanted to hurt something, but there was no-one to blame but himself.

It was his fault. It was all his fault. Joseph Oda had existed but he was gone now and Sebastian would never see him again. He probably wouldn’t even be welcome at the man’s funeral. Who the hell was he to attend something like that but the person who had brought around Joseph’s death? He wasn’t even sure he had the right to grieve Joseph like he was, but he couldn’t stop the tears from falling, or the pain that gripped his heart whenever he thought of the other man.

He punched the couch’s cushions, but that didn’t seem to help. Nothing helped. He sobbed and screamed for so long that soon he developed another headache and lay back on the couch, desperately praying for something, anything to come along and make everything all right. He couldn’t cope with it all anymore.

He eyes drifted to the liquor cabinet, his mind recalling the twenty year old scotch contained within.

With some effort he managed to stumble to his feet and make his way over to the liquor cabinet. He hesitated with his hand hovering over the door to the cabinet. Joseph would not want him to get drunk.

Well, what the fuck did that matter? The Joseph Oda that Sebastian had cared for had been nothing but a lie that Sebastian had sculpted from a broken man in order to make himself feel better. The truth was he had no idea what the real Joseph Oda would or wouldn’t want. He knew fuck all about the real man, and even if the real Joseph would have disapproved of Sebastian’s alcoholism, he was gone now, so it wasn’t as though Sebastian would have to deal with that horribly disappointed look on his face, or with the worried tone in his voice when he called Sebastian up to check on him the next day.

“God damn it,” Sebastian muttered as he grabbed the scotch and tore the cork out. He should have known that Joseph Oda was too good to be real. When was the last time anyone had actually given that much of a fuck about what happened to him?

For the first time since escaping Beacon Sebastian Castellanos allowed himself to drink alcohol, and for the first time since the Internal Affairs investigation that had almost cost him his job, Sebastian drank himself into a stupor.

It did not stop him from crying himself to sleep that night.

* * *

Sebastian only lasted two more months at the KCPD before Vankirk was asking for his badge. Sebastian wasn’t sure which had finally made them do it; the drinking, or the fact that he still refused to tell any version of the events in Beacon Hospital that did not include horrifying monsters and a shadowy organization named MOBIUS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I always found it a little weird that in TEW2 Sebastian says that he feels responsible for Joseph's death. Like, I know Sebastian carries around a lot of guilt, but come on.  
> Also, please stay tuned for next week's chapter. It's one that I'm really excited to post and will finally give you all a really good idea of where exactly this story is going.   
> Thanks for reading. :)


	7. Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Could you please state your name for the record?”

“Joseph Oda.”

It had only been several hours since Joseph had emerged from STEM, and the room in which he was debriefing seemed far too plain and quiet after all the violence and chaos he had just witnessed. He had been informed that he had been plugged into STEM for less than a day, but it had felt like far longer, and Joseph had yet to find his footing in the real world. He was still worried that he might close his eyes and end up somewhere completely different when he opened them once more.

At least they had allowed him to debrief with Yukiko Hoffman, who was much kinder and more gentle than many of the other psychiatrists under MOBIUS’s employ, especially those connected to STEM. There was also the fact that, as two of only a few members of MOBIUS stationed in the Krimson City base that were of Japanese descent, the two of them had always shared a sort of silent camaraderie that had never quite evolved into friendship, but which still allowed Joseph to feel at least somewhat at ease in her company.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said, leaning forward a little, the hard plastic of the chair anything but comfortable at that moment. His voice broke a little as he spoke, and he took a moment to clear his throat before continuing. “Is this conversation being recorded?”

“Of course,” Hoffman replied. “Your experience inside STEM was a unique one. Recording this conversation for future study seemed like an obvious decision. Do you have any objections?”

“No,” Joseph replied. Of course he didn’t have any objections. Objecting to any of MOBIUS’s wishes was a surefire way to make sure that you didn’t last long inside the organization. Even if he did object they would simply continue to record this conversation, only with a lot more subtlety.

“Of course not,” Joseph assured Hoffman.

The psychiatrist smiled at him over the top of the cold aluminum desk that lay between them, and glanced down at the papers in front of her momentarily before looking back up at Joseph. She took a moment to tuck a few strands of hair back behind one ear. They always seemed to be falling out of place and hanging over her eyes, no matter how hard she tried to pin them back.

“Do you remember where you are? Who you work for?” Hoffman asked.

They seemed like the most foolish, basic questions imaginable, but after what Joseph had just gone through he couldn’t blame Hoffman for starting with the basics.

“I am in Krimson City,” Joseph replied, “inside MOBIUS’s offices, the company that I have worked for since I was seventeen years old.”

Hoffman smiled at him.

“Well, you haven’t forgotten that much at least,” she said, giving Joseph an encouraging smile.

“As far as I’m aware I haven’t actually forgotten anything,” Joseph replied. “I can remember everything just fine. It’s just that there’s… I don’t know how to explain it… Too many memories there. I’m perfectly aware of which ones are and aren’t real as well, before you ask, or at least I am now that I’m out of STEM.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Hoffman said. “Do you remember what your mission was supposed to be?”

Joseph took a deep breath. His gloved hands clenched where they sat on his lap. Joseph hoped that it would be enough to stop them from shaking.

“I was to accompany Agent Juli Kidman inside STEM and assist her in completing her mission,” Joseph replied. “Unfortunately things did not go according to plan.”

“No,” Hoffman said. She did not, to Joseph’s surprise, sound as though she was judging him when she spoke. “They didn’t, did they? Agent Kidman reported that you attempted to murder her at least once, and that your memory and personality seemed to have been completely overwritten while you were in STEM. She told me that she had no choice but to shoot you and try to terminate your connection to STEM.”

“Or my life,” Joseph muttered beneath his breath. Injuries sustained inside STEM would not carry over into the real world, but if a person died inside STEM then that was it. They were gone, no matter that whatever had killed them inside STEM hadn’t been real.

“I can’t blame her,” Joseph said, speaking a little louder this time. “I was a liability.”

“That’s one word for it,” Hoffman said, giving Joseph another encouraging smile. “Would you like to tell us what happened in your own words?”

Joseph took a deep breath, felt his hands clenching so tightly that his knuckles hurt, and closed his eyes for a few moments before opening them again. Hoffman was still watching him patiently.

“The first thing that I remember was being in a police car,” Joseph began. “I couldn’t remember how I got there, and while I knew that we were inside STEM, and that I worked for MOBIUS it… I don’t know how to explain it. It all felt so far away and unimportant. I just suddenly had all of these new memories as well. At first there weren’t too many of them. I just knew that I was a member of the KCPD, and that Sebastian Castellanos and Juli Kidman were my partners and… I’m sorry. I can’t…”

“It’s okay,” Hoffman said. “Take your time.”

“The memories developed slowly,” Joseph continued. “By the time I met up with Kidman again I had years’ worth of memories of a relationship with Sebastian Castellanos. If I thought about it really hard I could remember that I worked for MOBIUS, and that I was supposed to be supporting Kidman, but it was tucked away at the back of my mind, and these new memories had risen to the forefront. When I was away from Sebastian… I’m sorry, I mean, Detective Castellanos…”

“That’s fine,” Hoffman interrupted. “Refer to him in whatever way feels most comfortable to you.”

“When I was away from Seb it was easier to remember who I really was, but when I was around him he was my partner and that was all that mattered.”

“Agent Kidman said that you started to turn while you were in there?”

“Into one of the Haunted, yes,” Joseph replied. “It’s true, but I don’t understand. I was inoculated, wasn’t I? I should have been immune to the transformation.”

“It’s one of the reasons you’re going to make such an interesting case study,” Hoffman said. “My current theory is that the two sets of conflicting memories were causing your psyche to rupture. We’ve witnessed something similar in a couple of the Union test subjects, specifically ones that have had their memories rewritten. You probably went through the same thing.”

Joseph nodded slowly. Finally receiving an explanation for that particular mystery was a small comfort at least, although it did nothing to explain the loss of self that he had experienced inside Beacon as a whole.

“Let’s move on,” Hoffman said. “Do you remember what was going through your mind when you attacked Kidman?”

Joseph cast his mind back. That particular incident was hazy. In fact, all of the times when he had almost lost himself and become one of the Haunted were the most difficult for him to remember clearly.

“I remember…” he began slowly. “I’m not sure what happened leading up to it. I just remember being alone with Kidman and somehow being aware of the fact that she could take my partnership with Sebastian away at any moment if she wanted to. I think at least part of me knew that if I stayed with her then my old memories would return to the front of my mind.”

“And you didn’t want that to happen?” Hoffman asked.

Joseph had to think about that for a while. At the time he had just been obsessed with stopping Kidman, sure that she was going to somehow take Sebastian away from him. His thoughts in that moment hadn’t really made much sense beyond that.

“I guess not,” Joseph conceded.

Hoffman frowned in thought.

“This alternative version of events that you were presented with; this new set of memories in which you were Sebastian’s partner in the KCPD; would you say that it was a more appealing version of reality than the one which you are normally presented with?”

Joseph wished that this question hadn’t been so easy for him to answer. Despite the problems that had been caused thanks to his new set of false memories, he had absolutely loved being Sebastian’s partner. He wasn’t sure that anyone had ever cared for Joseph as Sebastian had. Well, assumedly his parents had before they had been stolen away from Joseph by the car crash that had claimed their lives when he was only ten, but certainly no-one had cared for him like that while he had been an adult.

No matter how terrible things had gotten inside of STEM, Sebastian had refused to leave him behind, had refused to give up on Joseph. Hell, he’d even charged back in to face a monster they had barely escaped from, risking his life just for the sake of Joseph’s glasses. At the time Joseph had been horrified. Now he found himself smiling fondly at the memory.

It wasn’t just their time in STEM either. Joseph’s mind had supplied him with years’ worth of memories with Sebastian to go along with their apparent partnership. Even now that he was out of STEM he could easily recall the long hours that they had spent together in their shared office at the KCPD; the cases they had solved together, the shared coffees and the way that Sebastian’s face had crinkled in annoyance any time Joseph had used too much Canadian spelling in their official reports. There had been other times as well; ones that Joseph was afraid might bring a blush to his cheeks were he to think about them now.

Of course it hadn’t all been joy and sunshine. Joseph could remember the tough times as well; trying hopelessly to comfort Sebastian after the death of his child and the disappearance of his wife, calling Sebastian up, almost frantic with worry at the thought of his partner drinking himself into oblivion again or tending to a gash on Sebastian’s arm that one time a suspect had been so determined to avoid arrest that he had attacked Sebastian with a broken bottle.

He wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Escaping STEM and realizing that it had all been nothing more than a glorious illusion had been one of the most heartbreaking moments of Joseph’s life.

“Yes,” Joseph told Hoffman. “It was.”

“These new memories,” Hoffman said. “You said that you were at least somewhat aware of the fact that they weren’t real. So then, did you find yourself feeling anything for Sebastian Castellanos while you were together?”

“Yes,” Joseph answered immediately. “My god, yes. I would have died for him if necessary.”

Hoffman’s eyes narrowed as she regarded Joseph for a moment, before she continued, this time sounding as though she was choosing her words very carefully.

“Were these feelings for Detective Castellanos ones of a romantic or sexual nature?”

Joseph had nursed crushes on a few people here and there, especially during his teenage years, but he had never been in love with someone like he had been in love with Sebastian Castellanos; like, he was somewhat ashamed to admit, he was still in love with Sebastian Castellanos.

“Yes,” he replied.

“In these new memories that you were given, were the two of you…”

Hoffman trailed off, letting Joseph continue her sentence by himself if he so wished. She was, Joseph knew, giving him exactly enough rope to hang himself with. There was no sense in lying now though.

“We weren’t together in any sort of way that might be acknowledged as official,” Joseph said, “but um… we had… You know, messed around a few times. It wasn’t… wasn’t anything serious, but I have pretty distinct memories of… well… you know…”

Damn it. He was blushing. He knew that he would blush if he started to think about that too much. Hoffman already knew about Joseph’s sexuality. It had come up more than once in the psychological evaluation that all MOBIUS employees were forced to undergo before they could start working with the company and a couple of times in his meetings with Hoffman since then.

“You were lovers,” Hoffman confirmed, not sounding as though the revelation affected her either way.

“Yes,” Joseph confirmed.

“Thank you for your honesty,” Hoffman said. “This can’t be easy to talk about.”

She was right. Joseph wasn’t sure that any of his talks with Hoffman had been as difficult as this one was proving to be. God, he would be lucky if MOBIUS didn’t completely crucify him. Others had had their memory erased and found themselves removed from the company for far less than this.

“Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” Hoffman asked him.

Joseph thought about it for a moment. There were other things that he probably needed to talk through with a therapist, but he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted them on record.

What the hell, he ended up deciding. It wasn’t as though anything he could tell MOBIUS about his time inside Beacon could make him look worse in the organization’s eyes than what he had already said.

“I attempted to kill myself,” Joseph told Hoffman, surprised by how easy it was to talk about this compared to his relationship with Sebastian. “More than once.”

That at least seemed to get a reaction from Hoffman.

“I think some part of me knew that something was wrong,” Joseph explained, “and was trying to disconnect from STEM. I mean, I’m not actually suicidal. I never have been. I just knew that I was stuck somehow and needed to wake up. I tried to shoot myself in the head, but Sebastian stopped me. The other times were a little more subtle. You know, throwing myself into danger rather than doing anything more direct.”

“A sudden shock to the system such as being shot might have been enough to kick you out of STEM,” Hoffman said, a definite frown on her face. “Kidman shooting you in the shoulder was actually the thing that finally forced you to disconnect. However…”

Joseph wasn’t sure he had ever seen Hoffman look at him with such open worry and disapproval on her face before that moment.

“A suicide attempt inside STEM is probably more likely to actually kill you than to wake you up,” Hoffman said, “and I can guarantee you that a bullet to the brain would not have ended well for you. Even inside STEM and with the inoculation I suspect the best you could have hoped for would be mild brain damage.”

“It wasn’t my finest moment,” Joseph admitted, trying to smile, but unable to summon the energy to do so.

Hoffman pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at Joseph once more. Joseph wondered what was going through her mind. While he usually found himself quite capable of relaxing around Hoffman, at that moment sitting still and silent beneath her gaze felt like one of the hardest things he had ever done.

“I don’t understand,” he said when he could finally take the silence no longer. “None of the hypotheticals predicted anything like this. What the hell happened to me in there?”

“None of our hypotheticals predicted this,” Hoffman replied, “because none of them took into account the presence of a man like Sebastian Castellanos.”

“What do you mean?” Joseph asked.

“Castellanos has a unique influence inside STEM,” Hoffman explained. “It’s probably at least partially why his daughter makes such a perfect core. From what you and Kidman have told us, and from what we managed to observe for ourselves, it seems as though Sebastian Castellanos did not have conscious control over STEM, or at least wasn’t aware of what he was doing, but he was able to subtly manipulate the environment around him inside STEM to his advantage. He managed to survive inside STEM for an astounding length of time considering he wasn’t inoculated.”

“Did he survive?” Joseph asked, interrupting Hoffman. “Did Sebastian make it out?”

Hoffman pursed her lips again.

“I’m afraid that I haven’t been informed of Detective Castellanos’s current status,” Hoffman told him. “You’ll have to ask somebody else about that.”

“Of course,” Joseph nodded.

He had forgotten himself for a moment there. What did it matter whether or not Sebastian was still alive? He was not Detective Joseph Oda of the KCPD’s missing persons unit, despite what his mind and heart were still trying to tell him. He was a proud employee of MOBIUS, one of the most powerful organizations in the world. He should not care what happened to one old detective, no matter how much they had been through together.

He did though. He cared so much. He already missed Sebastian, and wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to react in a calm or rational manner if it turned out that Sebastian _had_ died while in STEM.

“I suspect,” Hoffman continued, “that your conflicting memories were Detective Castellanos’s fault as well. For some reason Sebastian Castellanos’s psyche decided that he needed a companion and ally. You happened to be inside STEM and within easy reach, and so his subconscious latched onto you, rewriting both your memories and his own so that you would both believe you were partners. As a survival tactic it seems to have worked, at least for Castellanos.”

Joseph couldn’t help but scoff at that.

“It’s not as though I managed to help him at all,” he told Hoffman. “In fact if I’m being honest then I would have to say that I was more of a burden to Seb than anything else.”

“Still, Castellanos managed to survive for far longer than anyone else who has entered STEM without first being inoculated. It might not be obvious at first, but it might have been the moral support that you unwittingly provided Castellanos that allowed him to survive STEM.”

Joseph wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say in response to that. What he wanted in that moment, more than anything else in the world, was simply to hear that Sebastian had made it out alive.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” Joseph asked Hoffman.

“I’m afraid that won’t be up to me to decide,” Hoffman replied. “But I can tell you this much; you won’t be allowed back inside STEM any time soon. If your personality is so submissive and easily overwritten that a layman like Castellanos was able to hijack your psyche like this then you’re too much of a liability. You should probably consider yourself lucky that Sebastian grabbed you and rewrote your memories before Ruvik or one of the other psychopaths inside STEM got ahold of you and turned you into something much worse.”

Joseph Oda did not feel particularly lucky, but he did not say as much to Yukiko Hoffman. After all, the two of them were the only ones in the room, but that did not mean that they were the only ones listening to the conversation.

* * *

Juli Kidman crossed her arms more tightly in front of her chest as she watched Hoffman and Joseph Oda’s conversation. She couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other. The thick two-way mirror that lay between them ensured that much.

Joseph’s eyes flicked over to the glass, and Kidman wondered whether her fellow MOBIUS operative had guessed that she was standing there, watching his every move.

She saw her boss sidle up behind her in the faint reflection of the glass before she heard him approach. For a large man he could move remarkably silently.

“What’s going to happen to him?” she asked him.

She hoped it wasn’t anything too bad. Joseph Oda had attempted to kill her more than once while the two of them had been inside STEM, but she still didn’t have it within her to be angry with him. Even she had let the shadows and phantoms inside STEM get to her. She had left a lot out of her own debriefing with Hoffman, including the fact that one of the phantoms she had faced inside STEM had closely resembled the very man that was standing right behind her at that moment.

“We’ll reassign him,” the Administrator replied, not looking at Kidman but at the man who sat on the other side of the two-way mirror. “Tuck him away in IT somewhere, as far away from an actual STEM pod as we can manage. He’s too unstable to be allowed back in.”

“He’ll want to know what happened to Sebastian,” Kidman said.

It hadn’t made much sense to her, but Sebastian and Joseph had grown attached to one another almost as soon as they had all entered STEM together. Kidman was reasonably sure there had been no opportunity for the two of them to have made contact before they had both entered STEM but before long the two of them had been acting as though they had known one another for years. At the time she hadn’t even really questioned it. When all three of them were together it had just made sense for the two of them to be attached at the hip. After all, they were partners, weren’t they? It had been surprisingly difficult to remove that particular notion from her mind and to remember the truth; Joseph was MOBIUS, just as she was, and not a member of the KCPD at all, let alone Sebastian’s partner of who knew how many years.

“Let him find out,” the administrator told her. “Let him sate his curiosity as far as the detective is concerned. He should not however, under any circumstances, be allowed to make contact with Castellanos. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear,” Kidman replied.

If a demotion was the only punishment that Joseph needed to worry about then he had truly gotten off light. Of course Kidman and a few of the other MOBIUS agents would have to watch Joseph to make sure he didn’t attempt to find Sebastian, but constant monitoring of ones activities was frankly par for the course as far as MOBIUS was concerned.

Kidman found herself watching Joseph again. The man that she had met inside STEM bore very little resemblance to the cold and strict man that Kidman had grown used to before the two of them had entered STEM together, or to the nervous wreck of a man that sat in front of her now. Something that had happened inside STEM had changed him, leaving Kidman with a sneaking suspicion that she wasn’t going to see very much of Joseph Oda at all over the coming months.

At that moment another figure joined Kidman and the administrator as they stood there watching the interview.

“So this is Joseph Oda?” the newcomer asked, staring at Joseph through the glass like a hungry man might look at a piece of prime steak.

Kidman recognized the man as being someone vaguely connected to MOBIUS’s psychological research department, but could not summon a name to go with the face.

“Watch it Harrington,” the administrator commented. “You’re practically salivating.”

“Is it true that his psyche was completely rewritten by a non-MOBIUS participant inside STEM?” Harrington continued, his attention still focused completely on Joseph.

“It appears so,” the administrator replied.

“Do you know what I could do with a test subject like that?” Harrington asked. Kidman felt as though she might as well not even be there considering how little attention either of the men beside her were now paying her.

The Administrator finally turned his attention away from Joseph and faced the man beside him. He quirked one eyebrow up, his mouth settling into that one smile that he had that looked far too much like a smirk, and which had always sent shivers down Kidman’s spine.

“Don’t worry about telling me now,” the Administrator told Harrington. “You’ll have plenty of time to show me.”

Kidman found herself staring at Joseph once more. She wondered whether Joseph had any idea at all of the mess that his life was about to turn into.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry its been a couple of weeks. Health issues and all that. But I'm back!
> 
> For those of you left slightly confused by the last chapter I hope that the story provides a bit more clarification as it goes on. I will say this; Joseph's understanding of events is a lot closer to reality than Sebastian's. Yes, he really works for MOBIUS in this story. If you look closely at some of the in-game documents and stuff, both Sebastian's boss at the KCPD (Vankirk) and the psychiatrist that he sees following the events of the first game (Harrington) both canonically work for MOBIUS. There's a reason both of them were discouraging him from trying to find Joseph. ;)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Joseph Oda closed the door to his apartment and then practically collapsed against it. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had felt this exhausted. It had been three o’clock in the morning by the time he had been allowed to leave MOBIUS’s headquarters and return to his apartment, which wasn’t particularly unusual by itself, but after everything that had happened he felt as though he would have been quite happy to sleep for several days straight.

The last time that he had slept had been before he had entered STEM; before he had met Sebastian Castellanos and tried to kill Juli Kidman. His life before STEM felt like it had taken place an entire lifetime ago, rather than the fourteen or so hours it had actually been.

He fumbled for the light switch, and winced as fluorescent light flooded his apartment. It reflected off the pale walls and stainless steel, the whole thing far too bright after the darkness of the world outside. He found himself wincing and took his glasses off, tucking them into the pocket of his jacket.

When he looked down he half expected to see the button-down vest and red tie that his partner… no… that Sebastian Castellanos had dressed him in. It felt as though he had been wearing it for several weeks straight. The plain black of his jacket and tie just seemed wrong now, as though Joseph had woken up in someone else’s body, and someone else’s clothes.

The lack of glasses actually helped. It was easier to look at his empty, soulless apartment without them.

Usually the barrenness of his apartment didn’t bother him. He spent all of his time at work after all. His apartment was just where he slept and kept his belongings. Previously he had seen no point for all of the clutter most people surrounded themselves with.

Sebastian had been a great one for clutter though. Joseph smiled at he recalled the sight of the other man’s desk, covered in paperwork that Joseph would surely have to attend to later. They had fit together so well as partners that it was much harder than it should have been to remind himself that Sebastian Castellanos was not actually his partner, any more than Joseph was actually a member of the KCPD.

Suddenly he found himself missing Sebastian so much that it was almost a physical ache in his chest. Joseph had technically never met Sebastian before that day, but it was hard to convince his heart of that fact when it was busy mourning a relationship that had spanned years.

Hoffman had recommended that Joseph take a few days off for psychological recovery, and the Administrator had reluctantly agreed. Joseph wasn’t sure whether he was glad for those days or not. Perhaps he could just sleep through them. There wasn’t anything else to tempt him in his apartment.

He was sure that he had never found anything about his apartment objectionable before that day. Yes it was empty, but it was clean and tidy; not a thing out of its assigned place. Joseph had no pets or even a house plant to disturb the pristine white of the kitchen tiles or the very pale grey of the walls. There were no photographs on the walls on in frames on the kitchen table or bench top. Who the hell would they even be of?

Joseph suddenly found himself wishing that he had a photograph of Sebastian that he might look at. He reached for his vest pocket, thinking that he could open his notebook and glance at the simple photograph of Sebastian that he kept there. His hand had slipped behind the thick fabric of his jacket before he had remembered that the notebook and the photo of Sebastian did not actually exist.

He groaned and let the back of his head fall back against the thick wood of the door. He had a feeling that it was going to be far harder to forget about Sebastian Castellanos than he had originally anticipated.

Joseph had known without having to ask that he would not be allowed to reach out and contact Sebastian, but that did not mean that he couldn’t keep an eye on him.

It was after three. He should have been attempting to sleep. Instead he found himself curling up on top of his bed, jacket and tie off, but socks still gently hugging his feet and his white shirt still buttoned, using his phone to look up any news regarding the incident at Beacon and specifically searching for any sign at all that Sebastian Castellanos had survived. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to sleep until he knew what had happened to his partner.

It wasn’t until he had already scrolled through three different news articles that Joseph realized he had thought of Sebastian as his partner again, and he cursed himself, annoyed by his own sentimentality, before ultimately giving up the ghost and accepting the fact that he probably wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking of Sebastian as his partner any time soon.

MOBIUS had done a good job of getting in front of the official news story. There was no mention of Sebastian Castellanos or of Juli Kidman or anyone else connected to STEM. In fact no names were being mentioned at all except those who had been officially associated with Beacon Mental Hospital, either as staff or as patients.

Joseph continued to scroll though, hoping for any sign at all that his beloved partner was still alive. He was exhausted and close to tears and had been considering giving up on the search, at least for one night, when his phone buzzed, the vibration so sudden in the stillness and quiet of his apartment that he almost dropped his phone.

The message was a simple one from Kidman. It was only a few words, but they brought more peace and joy than any other text that Joseph had received in his life before then.

‘Sebastian’s alive. Thought you should know.’

Joseph breathed out and felt his shoulders begin to shake as he did so. He let his phone fall onto the soft covers of his bed, and before he had fully processed what was happening, he was suddenly crying, the tears falling freely and showing no signs of stopping any time soon.

He wiped his tears away angrily. He didn’t even know why he was crying. Was it from relief? Or was it because he was mourning a relationship that had never truly existed? He didn’t even know. All that he knew was that he was exhausted, and that he missed Sebastian more than he had ever missed anyone in his entire life.

* * *

Things did not grow any easier over the next few days. Joseph found himself buying a coffee machine for his home; the closest that he could find to the one that he remembered sharing with Sebastian in their office at the KCPD. He found himself rolling up his sleeves far more often than he could remember ever doing before he had entered Beacon, and found himself watching a hockey game, not because he had ever had any real interest in it, but because his memory, for some reason, had decided that he and Sebastian had watched games together on the weekend.

Mostly he missed Sebastian. He was sure that he had been perfectly content before Beacon, but the absence of Sebastian’s friendship had shown him now just how desperately lonely he was, not to mention the touch starvation that he was suddenly painfully aware of. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the feeling of Sebastian’s hands on his skin. It was hard to get his body to recall the memory of any touches that had happened before Beacon, but if he concentrated hard enough then he could still remember the feeling of Sebastian’s arms around his waist and shoulders as Sebastian carried him to safety, or the press of a comforting hand on his shoulder. They were not however, the embraces or caresses that he had been craving, and any attempt to recall them only left himself missing Sebastian more.

He tried to tell himself that none of it had been real, but it was hard to convince himself of that fact when he could still remember so much of it, and sure, perhaps they hadn’t been partners _before_ entering STEM, but everything that they had been through while plugged into that hideous machine; facing the hordes of Haunted, and the Sentinel, and Sebastian saving Joseph’s life more times than Joseph could count anymore; that had all been real. Even if it had been based on a lie, Sebastian’s choices in those moments and Sebastian’s sacrifices had all been real. That was something, wasn’t it?

It was pointless to linger on such thoughts though. He knew that. MOBIUS would never let him make contact with Sebastian. He would be much better off in the long run if he could just forget about Sebastian and move on with his life, but that was easier said than done.

A week later Joseph Oda returned to work for MOBIUS, and found that he could no longer recognize his place there. Previously he had been working right alongside William Baker and Esmeralda Torres and the others connected to the STEM infiltration team. Joseph hadn’t exactly been friends with any of them, but he had known his place among them. On his first day back at the office he found himself being directed to an out of the way office in a corner of MOBIUS’s headquarters that he wasn’t sure he had ever visited before.

No-one had really told him much about his new position; just that he would be working in data management. He soon realized after a couple of hours of work that what that really meant was that he was now little more than a glorified clerk. 

It was mind-numbingly boring, and left far too much time for his mind to wander. Still, it was better than the alternative. The fact that he was still alive after everything that had happened inside STEM (after everything that _he_ had done inside STEM) was nothing short of a miracle, and while his new position as a ‘Data Manager’ was dull and lonely, it wasn’t as though he had been close enough to any of the members of his old team to really miss them.

No, of course not. He just missed Sebastian Castellanos instead.

He had been back at work for two days, and was just beginning to get the hang of his new position and make peace with his new life, when someone visited Joseph Oda’s unimportant little corner of MOBIUS headquarters.

Joseph had never met the man before, but he knew the face. Walter Harrington was one of MOBIUS’s pet psychiatrists. He wasn’t based in their headquarters, but instead spent most of his time out there in the wider world, realizing MOBIUS’s will in his own twisted way. Joseph had never had reason to talk to Harrington until that moment, so when he looked up and saw the psychiatrist standing in front of his desk he was more than a little surprised.

“Joseph Oda?” Harrington asked.

“Yes?” Joseph replied, his eyes darting between Harrington and the rest of the room. There was no-one else in there, but even only two days into Joseph’s new position he was often left by himself. That did not mean, of course, that no-one was watching him, but it at least gave the illusion of privacy, and meant that at moments like this one Joseph had no-one to whom he might be able to appeal for help. Not that any sort of help would be given. Harrington was ranked infinitely higher in MOBIUS’s internal structure than Joseph, especially since Joseph’s demotion.

“Excellent,” Harrington said. The older man had deceptively kind eyes. “Could you come with me please?”

Joseph had learned long ago that it was not considered appropriate to question any order or request that came from those higher than him in MOBIUS’s internal structure. Unfortunately a lot of those instincts had disappeared since he had been inside STEM. He wasn’t sure what had happened to him, but had a sneaking suspicion his time with Sebastian had rubbed off on him, and were at least partially to blame for what came out of his mouth next.

“And you are?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

The smile that made its way onto Harrington’s face then gave Joseph the distinct impression that the psychiatrist was well and truly aware of the fact that Joseph was bullshitting him.

“Of course,” the man said, graciously extending his hand so that Joseph could shake it in greeting. “Where are my manners? We haven’t met before now, have we? I’ve just heard so much about you that I already feel like I know you.”

Of course he had. Joseph knew that a large part of the psychiatrist’s information would have come not from people talking about Joseph so much as the many files and recordings that MOBIUS had pertaining to Joseph and his history with the organization.

“My name is Walter Harrington,” the psychiatrist continued as Joseph reluctantly accepted the other man’s hand. “I assist MOBIUS with psychological studies from time to time. Now, I’ve heard what happened to you inside STEM, and Joseph… Can I call you Joseph?”

Joseph shrugged noncommittally. He had a feeling Harrington would have continued to call him Joseph regardless of whether or not Joseph gave him permission to.

“MOBIUS and I find your case absolutely fascinating,” he said. “I’m hoping to study you. Nothing too serious of course; just a few psychological examinations and tests, and a few interviews. Perhaps we can even discover why it was so easy for someone to rewrite your memories, hmm?”

Harrington just stood there and smiled at Joseph then. Joseph didn’t know why the other man was waiting for his permission. Things would not go well for Joseph Oda should he refuse to go with the psychiatrist. The one thing he was worried about was whether or not such a project had been approved by the administrator.

“Do the higher-ups know about this?” Joseph asked.

Harrington had apparently been anticipating that question, because it only took a second for him to reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a USB stick, which he handed straight to Joseph.

“What is this?” Joseph asked as he contemplated the small device.

“Files pertaining to Project Failsafe,” Harrington explained, “including official authorization for the project and permission from the administrator to use whatever resources I wish, which, I think you will find, gives me full authority to pull you away from whatever damned busy work you’ve been saddled with after your fucking disaster of a mission inside STEM.”

Any warmth that Harrington’s face previously held quickly fled away. He still smiled at Joseph, but it was a cold, predatory smile that sent shivers down Joseph’s back.

“Project Failsafe?” Joseph asked, still holding the USB carefully in his gloved hands.

“Project Failsafe is you,” Harrington said. “Or at least, that’s all that you need to know about it.”

Joseph swallowed nervously, handed the USB stick back to Harrington, and got to his feet slowly and without another word. He grabbed his suit jacket, and then paused.

“Do you need me to bring anything?” he asked.

“No,” Harrington replied, the fake warmth and cheer back on his face. It was uncanny how good he was at faking it.

“Just you,” Harrington continued. “That’s all I need.”

* * *

The walk to Harrington’s particular corner of MOBIUS’s headquarters was not a long one, but every step felt as though it took an age.

The room itself did not bring Joseph any comfort. He had been expecting something similar to the room in which he had debriefed with Hoffman. It hadn’t been cozy by any means, but it had worked perfectly well as a room in which one person could ask another questions.

The room that Harrington led him to did not look like a room that had been designed for interviews. There _were_ a couple of chairs, but one sat in front of a half-dozen complicated pieces of machinery that Joseph couldn’t recognize and the other sat behind a computer that was tucked away in one corner of the room.

In the center of the room stood a long, low table, and Joseph could at least identify what that was; was at least vaguely aware of the function of some of the machines that surrounded that. It was an operating table, and the machines around it were all medical in nature.

Joseph swallowed nervously, took another look around the room, and tried not to imagine what might happen to him inside that room.

Harrington looked as though he had already made himself at home. A whiteboard on one of the sterile grey walls had already had the words ‘Project Failsafe’ written in red letters near the top of it. Half the board had been covered in notes, but Joseph did not have time to read any of them before Harrington was shepherding him over to the operating table and prompting him to sit down on top of it.

“Just stay there for a moment,” Harrington said.

He moved over to the computer in the corner and grabbed the chair that had been sitting there, dragging it over to place it on the floor right by Joseph’s operating table.

“Oh, don’t look so worried,” Harrington told Joseph as he sat in front of him. “I’m not going to hurt you. In fact I don’t intend to do anything at all to you today except ask you a few questions.”

Joseph swallowed again and found himself clutching his jacket nervously as it lay in his lap, picking at the buttons if only to give his fingers something to do. After a moment he realized that Harrington expected something from him in reply and so he nodded, telling himself that whatever was going to happen to him, it couldn’t be even half as bad as what he had endured inside STEM.

It was at that moment that the door to Harrington’s laboratory opened, and another man entered. The newcomer was younger than Walter Harrington; around Joseph’s age or perhaps a little younger, with dark skin and a closely shaved head. Joseph’s eyes were immediately drawn to the lone earring that sat in the lobe of the newcomer’s right ear, which was large and white and shone brightly in the pure white light of the lab.

“Sorry I’m late,” the newcomer said. “Baker was going on about this new idea he had for Union security forces. You know how he gets.”

“It’s no problem at all,” Harrington replied. “We were just getting started. Joseph Oda, this is Julian Sykes. He is going to be assisting me in my studies.”

Sykes made no attempt to shake Joseph’s hand. Instead he just smiled at Joseph, gave him a quick wave and then strode over to sit in the chair in front of the machines behind Joseph.

“What…?” Joseph began to ask.

“Sykes is a STEM programmer,” Harrington said, answering Joseph’s question before he had even finished asking it.

“A damn good one too,” Sykes boasted. “I’m telling you; Union wouldn’t be half as stable as it is right now if it wasn’t for me.”

“Are you sure that the Union project can spare you?” Joseph asked. He wasn’t entirely sure why a STEM programmer might be interested in his case. Perhaps they wanted to patch STEM’s programming to make sure that what had happened to Joseph couldn’t happen to anyone else? He supposed that made sense. He just wished that he had more of an idea of what Harrington wanted to do with him, because one thing Joseph _was_ sure of, it was far more than to simply ask him a few questions.

“Don’t you worry about that sort of thing,” Harrington said. “You leave that up to us.”

“You said this was only going to be one or two days a week,” Sykes said to Harrington.

“And it will be,” Harrington assured him. “As much as I would like to be able to devote all of my time and attention to Joseph here, I have plenty of work that I need to see to outside of MOBIUS HQ. No, I am afraid that all three of us will still have plenty to occupy us outside of Project Failsafe.”

Joseph stared down at the jacket in his lap once more. He wasn’t sure which was better; sitting behind his computer and entering line after line of data, or sitting in here with Harrington staring at him as though he was a particularly fascinating breed of fungus.

“Now,” Harrington said, catching Joseph’s eyes with own and smiling once more. “Shall we begin?”

* * *

To Joseph’s surprise and confusion, Harrington had told the truth, at least where that first day was concerned. He had Joseph relate the story of his time inside STEM, just as he had with Hoffman, only he forced Joseph to go into a lot more detail, and interrupted every so often to ask Joseph a barrage of questions.

“What did it feel like when you turned?”

“How aware of your old memories were you when you attacked Agent Kidman?

“Were you trained in the use of sniper rifles before you entered STEM or was that part of the fabricated personality that Sebastian Castellanos came up with for you?”

The questions seemed mostly harmless, but Joseph was still exhausted when it came time to finish for the day.

Julian Sykes remained mostly silent throughout the proceedings, but at the end of the day, once Harrington had bid them both farewell, he actually came over to Joseph and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey man,” he began. “It sounds like it was pretty rough in there.”

“That’s certainly one way to put it,” Joseph said, briefly removing his glasses so he could rub at his eyes. He didn’t know whether it was the lighting in the lab that was doing it, or just the fact that he was exhausted, but his eyes were growing a little sore.

“I mean,” Sykes continued as he took a step back from Joseph, “we warn everybody about the nightmare visions and the hallucinations and stuff, but STEM is unpredictable, you know? Especially the hobbled together version that Victoriano and Jimenez cooked up. I’m not going to be that jerk who tells you, ‘you were lucky to get out’, but well, at least you’re not those poor assholes that were locked up in Beacon when it happened, right?”

“I suppose that’s something,” Joseph conceded.

He had already gotten to his feet and was starting to make his way to the building’s exit, but Sykes had fallen into step behind him. He wasn’t sure that he had it in him at that moment to look at the bright side. Optimism had never been his forte, and he was even less inclined towards it now.

“You might also be the only person who has even fallen in love with someone while inside STEM,” Sykes suggested.

Joseph found himself coming to a halt in the middle of the hallway thanks to Sykes’s words. He glanced over his shoulder and glared at the other man, who immediately threw up his hands as though in defense.

“Okay. Sorry,” he offered. “Clearly I overstepped the mark there. No talking about your relationship with Castellanos. Got it.”

Joseph began to walk towards the exit again, and this time Julian Sykes did not attempt to stop him.


	9. Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

After that Joseph’s schedule changed. Every few days he would be pulled away from his safe and mostly forgotten little corner of MOBIUS to be poked and prodded and studied by Walter Harrington.

Joseph still had no idea what the goal of Project Failsafe actually was; whether it was purely just about studying him or whether Harrington had some sort of larger plan in mind, but no matter how many times he asked Harrington, the psychiatrist refused to answer. He thought that Sykes might be more inclined to open up, and approached the STEM operator when Harrington wasn’t around, but Sykes just threw his hands up in response.

“Sorry man, but I’m not allowed to tell you anything at all about Failsafe. Harrington made that pretty damn clear.”

At first Joseph’s meetings with Harrington consisted of nothing but questions. Once Harrington was finished with Joseph’s time in Beacon, he started to enquire about Joseph’s past, starting with the car crash that had killed Joseph’s parents.

After a few weeks of this Harrington took x-rays and samples of Joseph’s blood for what was the first time, but certainly not the last. A few meetings after that he plunged a needle into Joseph’s arm and completely refused to tell Joseph what was in it.

About a month after that Harrington anaesthetized Joseph for the first time. Joseph had no idea what had happened to him while he was under, but he had woken with a splitting headache and a vague sense that something was horribly wrong.

“What are you doing to me?” he had asked Harrington afterwards, while his world had still been spinning. The psychiatrist had not replied, and Sykes wouldn’t meet Joseph’s eyes.

Most of the time Sykes remained quiet, but occasionally he would approach Joseph and offer him a comforting word, or a gentle hand on Joseph’s shoulder, and a couple of times he even offered to get Joseph a coffee. Joseph didn’t think that the other man was trying to strike up a conversation so much as trying to be kind to Joseph to assuage whatever guilt he felt at being a part of Harrington’s experiments.

“Don’t worry,” Harrington told Joseph whenever Joseph attempted to ask about Project Failsafe. “I promise you that we’re not harming you in any way at all.”

It was a lie. Harrington had already harmed Joseph. Half of the drugs and tests that Harrington was administering had left Joseph either nursing a splitting headache or feeling incredibly nauseous, and Joseph had discovered at least one scar on the back of his head that had most definitely not been there before he had been knocked out.

Joseph walked through the rest of his life in a haze. His time with MOBIUS was either spent staring at a computer screen, desperate for any sort of mental stimulation at all, and the other half was spent beneath the pure white lights of Harrington’s lab, being drugged and interviewed and cut open until he felt like there was nothing left of him.

One time he woke up on the table inside Harrington’s lab to discover that three whole days had passed seemingly without his knowledge, and that he couldn’t even remember entering Harrington’s laboratory. He had a panic attack after that one. He was terrified that one day he would wake up after one of Harrington’s experiments to discover that he had completely forgotten about Sebastian, or that some other fundamental part of his personality had been completely changed or erased.

“Please,” Joseph begged Harrington. “Why can’t I remember anything? What did you do!?”

“Nothing that you need to worry about,” Harrington assured him, with the same kind and confident tone he always adopted when talking to Joseph in these situations.

“Nothing I need to…?” Joseph stammered. “I lost three days!”

“And I can assure you that I put them to far better use than you would have,” Harrington replied. “Now, if you could please look into this light for me?”

Joseph did not look at the light. Instead he glared straight at Harrington.

Harrington pulled back and stared at Joseph as though he had physically struck the psychiatrist.

“Oh dear,” Harrington muttered. “Joseph Oda, are you no longer content with this arrangement?”

“What the hell is there for me to be content about?” Joseph snapped, forgetting himself for a moment.

Over the last few months he had been stumbling around in a daze, barely aware of who or where he was or even which way was up. He was starting to feel like a stranger inside of his own body. Before Beacon he had been at least vaguely aware of the fact that he was not in control of his own life or destiny, but it hadn’t bothered him then. Now it did, as though tasting the slightly more normal life that he had experienced inside STEM had awoken a hunger for autonomy and human connection that Joseph hadn’t known he had possessed. Now, on top of all of that, he had a headache, he was tired and his mouth felt strangely dry. He’d had enough of being poked and prodded and knocked out whenever Harrington’s whims or experiments called for it.

The smile disappeared from Harrington’s face completely. He pulled back further from Joseph and took a long, slow breath. Joseph noticed that the psychiatrist’s hands were clenched very tightly.

“There is nothing forcing you to stay here,” Harrington said. It was not technically a lie, but it was a truth that left out some fairly important facts regarding Joseph’s continued survival should he take such a risk.

“Go on,” Harrington said, nodding towards the door, which had remained closed for the entirety of every single one of Joseph’s meetings with the psychiatrist. “You can leave if you wish. I will admit that it would be a massive disappointment to me to lose a test subject as interesting and unique as you, and it would be a massive setback for Project Failsafe, but go right ahead and leave if you wish.”

Harrington’s tone had grown more and more subtly threatening as he had spoken. As he continued the threat behind his words grew so obvious that Joseph would have had to be a fool to miss it.

“After all,” Harrington said, glaring openly at Joseph, “you’re so very indispensable to the company these days. I’m sure you would be just fine without your connection to this project and without my speaking for you.”

Joseph did not know whether MOBIUS would truly kill him should he attempt to walk out on Harrington’s experiments. After all, it would be far more convenient to simply make it so that Joseph _couldn’t_ leave. He wouldn’t be the first person to be paralyzed or lobotomized for the sake of MOBIUS’s ambition.

Harrington did not say anything more. He just stood there, waiting to see whether or not Joseph would actually be foolish enough to stand up and move towards the door. Joseph found that despite Harrington’s thinly veiled threats, the idea still held some level of appeal. He felt as though he was walking around in a dream anyway; the same empty loneliness and lack of direction guiding his life as probably would should he actually have his free will removed. Hell, maybe MOBIUS would just save them all the trouble and kill Joseph outright.

Joseph did not move though, and the tension was finally broken by the sound of Sykes clearing his throat.

“Do you have something to say Julian?” Harrington asked the STEM programmer.

“What?” Julian said. “Who, me? No, nothing. Nothing to say at all…”

Harrington narrowed his eyes over at Sykes, clearly not sure whether he should actually believe Sykes. Eventually he turned his attention back to Joseph and smiled at him once more.

“You’re still here then?” Harrington said. “Good. That’s good.”

* * *

Thankfully that particular session with Harrington only lasted for another hour. Joseph wasn’t sure that he would have been able to hold himself together for much longer than that.

As soon as Harrington had left the room Joseph allowed his head to fall forward into his hands. He groaned, ran one hand through his hair, trying both to calm his mind and to banish the headache that was still lurking behind his eyes, and wondered whether MOBIUS would allow him a day or so off to recover from whatever the hell it was that Harrington had done to him this time. They probably would, he realized, as long as it didn’t interrupt Harrington’s precious experiment in any way.

“Hey dude,” Sykes said as he placed a hand on Joseph’s shoulder, making Joseph jump. He had practically forgotten that the programmer was still in the room with him.

“You all right?” Sykes asked, and Joseph didn’t even need to glare at him to make him backtrack this time. “Shit, I mean, obviously you’re not all right. I don’t think anyone could be all right after the bullshit you’ve been through. I just wanted to…”

Sykes broke off then, and Joseph lifted his head up to look at the other man. He could tell that Julian Sykes was just trying to help, and while the programmer had admittedly been helping Harrington with his experiments or, at the very least, just sitting back and watching while Harrington did who knew what to Joseph, he probably didn’t want to be there any more than Joseph did. He was just a STEM programmer after all, really nothing more than technical support. He couldn’t be very high up in MOBIUS’s chain of command.

“Wouldn’t it be easier for you if you didn’t try to befriend me?” Joseph asked.

“Yeah,” Sykes replied with a subtle shrug of his shoulders. “Sure. It would probably be way easier for me if I could just see you as some sort of specimen like I think Harrington does, but I can’t just shut off my humanity and my feelings like that. I’m not a damned robot. Would probably be easier for me if I was, but yeah… I don’t know. I feel for you man.”

It was a level of warmth that Joseph wasn’t used to, and wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond. Sykes hitched himself up onto the operating table so that he was sitting right beside Joseph. If Joseph relaxed just a little more than their legs might almost be touching. He could just feel Sykes’s warmth radiating over to join with his own. He was torn between shuffling further away from the programmer or shuffling closer, so that their legs pressed against one another, still so desperately touch-starved but not knowing how to fix it, or whether he was actually comfortable enough around Sykes to allow him to be the one to break through that barrier.

“I’m not expecting the two of us to suddenly be friends or anything,” Sykes continued. “Hell, I probably wouldn’t want anything to do with me if I was in your position. But I’m thinking well… maybe I can help you out somehow?”

“How?” Joseph asked. It wasn’t as though a STEM programmer like Sykes would have some sort of miraculous way to help Joseph escape from MOBIUS alive, and Joseph wasn’t sure that anyone would be able to help him with his mental problems.

“Your boy Castellanos,” Sykes said. “You still care about him, right? You’re probably worried about him.”

Sykes had found a way to immediately gain Joseph’s attention. He found himself suddenly hanging on Sykes’s every word.

“Well, MOBIUS is keeping tabs on him after everything that happened in Beacon,” Sykes said. “Not everyone has clearance to access the data we’re keeping on him. I can guarantee you that you certainly don’t. Not anymore.”

“But you do?”

Sykes winced.

“Not exactly,” he said, “but I know a couple of workarounds that we can use.”

Joseph stared at the other man for a moment, before he found his eyes darting around the rest of the laboratory. MOBIUS was probably listening in, and Joseph doubted that they would approve of his and Sykes’s topic of conversation.

Joseph leaned closer to Sykes so that he could whisper to him.

“Are you sure it’s safe for us to be talking about this?” he asked.

Sykes actually chucked at that.

“Look, we’re just going to check on Sebastian, right? It’s not like you’re going to go chasing after him or anything,” Sykes said. “Besides, I know for a fact there’s only two microphones in this room. One is connected to the security camera that Harrington has requested be shut off during all of his sessions with you, and which, I may add, I have yet to turn back on, and the other is a personal recorder that Harrington has paired up with his laptop, both of which are also currently switched off. Look, I ain’t going to deny that MOBIUS is keeping a very close eye on you, but right at this current moment, they have absolutely no idea that the two of us are even talking with one another.”

Joseph took a moment to consider Sykes’s offer.

“It sounds like you’ve done this sort of thing before,” he commented.

“You bet your ass I have,” Sykes replied.

Joseph wondered if Sykes wasn’t making a terrible mistake. Just a few years ago Joseph would have taken what he knew about Sykes’s disobedience straight to the Administrator. He had changed over the past few months however, and he was glad that he had.

“All right,” Joseph said, trying to summon a smile for the other man. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

No-one seemed to pay Sykes or Joseph any attention at all as they moved through MOBIUS’s hallways and rooms together. Joseph supposed that a low-level STEM programmer and a washed up operative were of little interest to most MOBIUS members. Apparently it was only Walter Harrington that viewed Joseph as being of any more import than the plain grey or white walls of MOBIUS HQ that the two of them passed.

Joseph hadn’t returned to the STEM complex since his mission inside Beacon had left him disgraced, mostly because MOBIUS had insisted on his having as little to do with his old department as possible.

He caught a glance of MOBIUS’s own STEM prototype as they walked past the chamber and found himself frowning. He could still remember the report that Hoffman had filed about him.

‘Highly submissive personality,’ it had read. ‘Easily influenced by others.’

Such things were usually prized in a MOBIUS employee, and Joseph was sure that if his personality had been rewritten by a MOBIUS member and not an outsider then it wouldn’t have been considered a problem at all, but because it had been Sebastian Castellanos that his heart and mind had latched onto, suddenly he was being treated as a pariah and an outcast, thrown to Walter Harrington for the older man to do whatever he pleased with Joseph.

Despite everything that he had gone through over the past few months, Joseph wasn’t sure that he had ever actually hated MOBIUS until that exact moment.

It was late in the day and most employees were leaving, unless of course they had something important to see to. Sykes and Joseph were left mostly undisturbed as they sat down at a desk in the STEM complex that looked pretty much the same as any other.

Joseph took a seat beside Sykes as the other man typed away at the computer for a moment. After a second he inserted a USB stick into the computer’s tower, and then began typing away again, his fingers moving faster than Joseph could follow them. After a few more clicks Sykes had pulled up Sebastian’s file.

Joseph glanced around them to make sure that no-one was watching them, and then leaned in to investigate the file that Sykes had pulled up.

It was a copy of Sebastian Castellanos’s official report on the events inside Beacon. Joseph quickly scanned through it, wincing as he realized how insane half of the detective’s words would sound to anyone who hadn’t been there.

The Beacon report was far from the only document that Sykes had been able to pull up either. Joseph soon realized that MOBIUS had been keeping a very close eye on his old partner. Along with Sebastian’s report were transcripts of every single one of the ‘mandatory counselling sessions’ that Sebastian had been regularly undergoing, beginning shortly after they had gotten out of Beacon. Joseph saw his own name mentioned frequently in a lot of them. At first his curiosity was strong enough for him to read the transcript, but after a couple of pages he realized how desperately lost and alone the other man was; just as much, or perhaps even more than he himself was. Joseph wished that he could reach through the computer and comfort the other man, or at least find some way to tell Sebastian that not only had he not been a figment of Sebastian’s imagination, but that he was also still alive and comparatively unharmed.

‘I miss him,’ Sebastian said in the transcript. ‘I keep trying to tell myself that he wasn’t real, or that our friendship wasn’t at least, but it doesn’t matter. No matter how much I try to tell myself it doesn’t make any sense, I just keep missing him.’

Joseph felt tears welling up being his eyes, and quickly scrolled past. After only a few more seconds of reading the transcripts he exited out of them altogether. It felt far too much like an invasion of privacy. Sebastian’s words had never been intended for him, but rather for the anonymous psychiatrist that he was talking to; the anonymous psychiatrist that was on MOBIUS’s payroll and seemed to be doing everything within their power to convince Sebastian that he was going completely crazy.

There were regular reports from one Lieutenant James Vankirk as well, Sebastian’s superior in the KCPD, also clearly on MOBIUS’s payroll. Joseph frowned at that particular discovery. What chance of recovery or of regaining a normal life could Sebastian possibly have when his fate seemed to be dictated almost entirely by the agents that MOBIUS had surrounded him with?

“I need to do something to help him,” Joseph said as he stared at Vankirk’s most recent report.

“Woah, woah,” Sykes said, grabbing the mouse out from under Joseph’s hand as though he was afraid Joseph was going to immediately do something dangerous with it. “You can’t just go in half-cocked like that. You have to think these things through first. What exactly were you planning on doing?”

“I don’t know,” Joseph admitted, “but I can’t just sit back and watch while MOBIUS ruins his life like this.”

“Hey,” Sykes hissed through clenched teeth. “Calm the fuck down, all right? Need I remind you that we are still very much inside MOBIUS headquarters, we are absolutely not supposed to be doing this, and I haven’t worked out where in this room all the bugs are yet, so please, for the love of god, keep your voice down.”

Sykes had a point. Joseph had been letting his emotions get the better of him, which wasn’t like him at all.

“You don’t understand,” Joseph said. “After everything that we went through together, I have to help him somehow.”

“I’m not sure that there’s any way that you can,” Sykes said. “Need I remind you that you are already in enough trouble as it is? If you’re going to do anything then you need to think it through very, very carefully, because I doubt MOBIUS is going to cut either you or Castellanos any slack any time soon.”

Joseph wished that everything that Sykes had been saying didn’t make so much damn sense. After all, he was just one man. What the hell could he hope to do against a monolith like MOBIUS?

“I’ll tell you what,” Sykes began. “I’ll give you a copy of all of that data, as well as a backdoor into Castellanos’s files. You can keep an eye on him then, but in return you have to promise me that if you’re ever caught with that shit, you absolutely, one hundred percent do not let MOBIUS know that I was the one to give it to you, all right?”

Joseph agreed without any hesitation at all.

* * *

Joseph had hoped that the three day gap in his memories would be the absolute worst that Harrington put him through. He had been wrong.

Weeks turned into months, and Harrington’s experiments continued at a merciless pace. Time seemed to pass Joseph by at an alarming rate, the tedium and repetition and occasional horror of his life settling into a rhythm that he soon knew far too well. Sometimes he would lose a day, and sometimes almost a week. Sometimes Joseph knew that the gaps in his memory were thanks to surgery. On other days he had absolutely no idea what had caused them.

He gained new scars as well. More often than not they were surgical scars around his head, but there was also one over his heart that Joseph was reasonably sure was also surgical, but there were also smaller injuries; a few cuts and more than a few bruises that he could not explain for the life of him.

One time he woke up after two days of lost memory to discover blood beneath his fingernails. After a quick check of his own body he realized that the blood was not his own. He had vomited after that one, a combination of the fear of what he might have done during those two lost days combined with vague memories from Beacon of his hands around Kidman’s or Sebastian’s neck sending him running for the bathroom and hiding there for almost an hour as he dealt with a rebelling stomach and the occasional sob that could not be suppressed.

Of course Sykes was still there, and he occasionally had a few comforting words for Joseph, but that was about the extent of their friendship. He did not once step in to object to Harrington’s treatment of Joseph, and he continued to deny Joseph even the vaguest idea of exactly what it was that Harrington was doing to him.

He did not once ask Joseph how things with Sebastian were going either, which was just as well, because Joseph had absolutely nothing to report. He had been spending more and more time trapped in Harrington’s office and consequently he was exhausted. No matter how much he might have wanted to help Sebastian, he had slowly come to the realization that he wasn’t sure there was any way at all that he _could_ help the other man. Sykes had been right.

Joseph kept an eye on him though; watching Sebastian’s life as it fell apart just as surely as Joseph’s own. He continued to skim through the reports as Sebastian lost his job with the KCPD and the reports of James Vankirk and the unnamed psychiatrist disappeared to be replaced with the reports from a simple, far less qualified tail. As far as MOBIUS was concerned, Sebastian Castellanos was no longer a threat.

* * *

Approximately eighteen months after the start of Project Failsafe and after another blank period in Joseph’s memory, which had thankfully only lasted for several hours this time, Walter Harrington got up from his chair and smiled at Joseph.

“Well,” he said, looking remarkably pleased with himself. “I think we can officially call Project Failsafe a success.”

Joseph wasn’t sure what had happened. He still didn’t even know what the point of Project Failsafe even was. He was vaguely aware of a bitter tang in the air though that immediately made him think of spilled blood, even though there was no sign of any in the room.

“Well Joseph Oda,” Harrington said, leaning down and offering Joseph his hand to shake. “It’s been a pleasure working with you.”

He was still beaming, looking incredibly pleased with the outcome of whatever experiment he had subjected Joseph to.

Harrington shook Sykes’s hand as well, and the programmer looked even less happy about the contact than Joseph had felt.

And with that Harrington had simply walked out of the Project Failsafe lab, and Joseph never saw him again.

* * *

“Can you tell me about Project Failsafe now?” Joseph asked Sykes a few weeks after it was all done.

“No way,” Sykes replied. “I am not sticking my neck out like that. Besides, you’re probably better off not knowing.”

Joseph found it hard to agree with that particular sentiment.

Now that Joseph no longer had Harrington’s experiments to take up his time, his life became nothing but dull, boring repetition. His work at MOBIUS showed no signs of changing any time soon, and at the end of every day he found himself back in his dull, lifeless apartment.

He didn’t even have Sykes’s company. Now that they no longer had Project Failsafe to unite them, there was no reason whatsoever for a member of the STEM programming team to have anything to do with a mostly useless and all but forgotten bookkeeper.

And so the days passed in a haze, days and weeks and months blurring together. Joseph knew that something had to change eventually. He just never would have predicted the form that change would take.


	10. Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

Something was happening inside MOBIUS. Joseph didn’t know what it was, because no-one had told him. Then again, the higher ups never really saw fit to tell him anything at all these days. As long as he stuck to his little corner and saw to the administrative tasks he was given, no-one really seemed to pay him much attention.

Everyone else was clearly worried about something though. Joseph had passed Juli Kidman running down the hallway. She didn’t usually pay him any more attention than most people did of late, but on that day she actually stopped and glanced at him for a moment, clearly worried about something and, Joseph suspected, contemplating whether or not she should bring Joseph in on whatever it was, before turning away from him and continuing on her way.

Joseph had simply been intending to take a bathroom break, but his curiosity had been aroused. He followed Kidman, wanting to know what had happened to plunge her and the rest of MOBIUS into such chaos. After all, Kidman hadn’t been the first worried MOBIUS employee that Joseph had noticed that day.

Kidman ended up in a small side room, where she met with a woman that Joseph recognized almost immediately. He had only met her a couple of times before entering Beacon, and she hadn’t exactly held much significance to him then, but she certainly did now.

Myra Castellanos was Sebastian’s wife after all; one that Sebastian was still technically married to. Joseph had a feeling that Sebastian had finished grieving for her a long time ago and probably presumed she was dead. Hell, Sebastian had still technically been married when the two of them had conducted their mostly secret love affair. Although, really, they hadn’t _actually_ slept with each other, and Myra _had_ been missing at the time. It was a strange set of circumstances for Joseph to wrap his head around, but one thing was for sure. He did feel a little guilty for sleeping with Myra’s husband, even though it had never technically happened.

Kidman and Myra began talking backwards and forwards in frantic whispers. Myra looked even more worried than Kidman did. Joseph didn’t catch much of what they were saying, but he did hear the name ‘Lily’ mentioned, as well as the word ‘STEM’, and then ‘Sebastian’.

It was at that moment that Myra looked up from their conversation, her eyes immediately fixing on Joseph. Previously any time that Myra and Joseph had passed one another in the halls of MOBIUS headquarters, she had glared at him. She had obviously heard about his attachment to her husband, in which case Joseph really couldn’t blame her for disliking him. She didn’t glare at him that time though, just muttered something to Kidman and then approached him.

“Don’t you have something that you should be doing?” she asked him.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph apologized.

Before he left Kidman and Myra in peace he noticed Kidman go up to Myra and pull gently on her arm.

“Don’t you think we should…” was all that Joseph caught before he had moved too far away to hear them anymore.

He began eavesdropping more deliberately after that incident. If whatever was going on with MOBIUS involved Sebastian then he definitely wanted to know more. He thought about contacting Sykes, but when he asked after the man he was told that Sykes was currently involved in a mission inside STEM, and that Joseph would not be able to contact him until further notice.

Others were missing too. He kept an eye out for Kidman and Myra, but he saw no sign of them, or of Hoffman, or of many other members of the current STEM team. Thankfully Joseph had become something of an expert when it came to looking inconspicuous. He caught a few more whispers. When half of them mentioned at least one of the Castellanos’s, he knew that he would be unable to simply return to his normal routine. Something was going on, and if Sebastian was involved then Joseph desperately needed to be a part of it.

“They brought Castellanos in last night,” Joseph overheard one of MOBIUS’s security guards say as Joseph pretended all of his attention was on fetching a drink from the break room water cooler.

“Shit, really?” the woman he was talking to replied. Joseph vaguely recognized her from his time working with MOBIUS’s STEM commando team. “They must be getting desperate.”

Joseph froze. His heart immediately began pounding. Sebastian was right there in HQ with them.

“I don’t know about that,” the guard continued. “He actually managed to survive STEM, right?”

“Yeah, but without any training? He was probably only in there for a couple of minutes or something. No one survives without training or inoculation. Not when it’s that unstable.”

“Union is supposed to be more stable though, right?” the guard continued. “Maybe he’ll do all right.”

Joseph’s heartbeat grew more frantic. Things were worse than he had thought. MOBIUS had pulled Sebastian in to send him back into STEM. They must have been desperate, which meant that Sebastian was probably in very real trouble.

“What the hell is he going to do that our team can’t?”

“Fucked if I know.”

“Excuse me,” Joseph interrupted the two of them, no longer able to just sit there and listen to the two of them speak. The woman clearly knew about Sebastian, but with any luck she wouldn’t know about Joseph’s connection to him. She and Joseph hadn’t been close after all. With any luck she wouldn’t even remember that she and Joseph had worked together.

“I have a friend on the infiltration team,” Joseph told them. It was probably the truth. After all, the last that he had heard, Sykes had been inside STEM, and it probably wasn’t stretching the truth too far to call Sykes a friend. “Julian Sykes? A STEM programmer? You wouldn’t happen to know how the mission is going, would you?”

The woman looked closely at Joseph, squinting at him and pursing her lips. Joseph wondered whether she was trying to place his face, or whether she was just deciding whether or not she should tell him anything.

“It’s just been a while since I heard anything,” Joseph added.

“Well, not great,” the woman finally replied. “Two more agents have gone dark in the last few hours, and I don’t think we’ve heard anything at all from Sykes or the rest of the team since the Core went dark.”

Her eyes narrowed again.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“Thanks,” Joseph said, nodding at the woman and then quickly disappearing from the room before either the woman or the guard could ask him any questions.

“Hey!” the woman called out after him, but Joseph paid her no mind.

The Core, Sebastian’s daughter Lily, had gone missing. Sebastian and a team of MOBIUS agents were lost inside STEM, in who knew what sort of danger. It was like Beacon all over again.

Not only was Sebastian probably in danger, this might be the only chance Joseph was given to try and make contact with him. He ran towards the STEM room, only slowing down when he grew closer. He might have been desperate to make sure that Sebastian was all right, but he did not want to raise suspicion or draw too much attention if he could avoid it.

There was a sensor by all the doors to the STEM room that would normally read a MOBIUS employee’s cerebral chip and stop anyone without the proper authorization from entering, but clearly the STEM room had seen more use than usual over the last few days, because all of the doors were unlocked and the scanners switched off.

Three years ago Joseph’s chip would have allowed him access to the room. Now he was willing to bet that his authorization had been revoked, so he was more than glad to see the sensors turned off. He had been worried that he might have to wait for someone else to enter or leave the room and try to sneak in after them, or that he would have been stuck, peeking in through the glass of the doors in the hopes of even getting a glimpse of Sebastian.

He snuck in, opening and closing the door as quietly as he could. He stuck to the corners of the room, where the shadows were darkest, and took a few moments to just take in everything in the room. The Administrator himself was overseeing the operation, and was keeping his cold blue eyes focused almost completely on the machine in front of him.

Nearly all of the STEM machine’s pods were occupied. Of the few pods that Joseph could see from his current angle, the monitors of all but one of them showed no vital signs at all. Joseph tried to spot Sebastian, but before he could he found his attention being grabbed by a familiar sounding voice crying out in sudden shock.

“Shit!” Kidman cursed.

“Kid?” the Administrator asked, turning his attention towards the woman, who was standing at a nearby monitoring station with a communicator pressed to the side of her head. The Administrator did not look nearly as worried as Kidman sounded.

“Sorry,” Kidman replied, obviously attempting to calm herself. “It just looks like we’re losing another agent. Her heart rate’s dropping at an alarming rate.”

“And this one is particularly concerning why?” the Administrator asked.

Kidman appeared to need a moment to think her answer over. Joseph wondered why.

“She was a friend,” Kidman replied. “Is a friend. That’s all.”

The Administrator did not look entirely convinced. Luckily, for Kidman at least, someone else called out at that moment, attracting the attention of nearly everyone in the room.

“We’re losing Castellanos,” one of the other STEM technicians cried out. “Heart rate’s falling, and he’s losing connection. I don’t know what’s going on in there, but it’s not good!”

“Damn it!” Kidman cried out again.

Joseph glanced around the room. Nearly everyone was suddenly flying into action. Joseph wasn’t sure what any of them planned to do. As far as he could tell, they were all flying blind, and if the Core was absent, as the tech back in the break room had suggested, then MOBIUS could not make contact with anyone stuck inside.

Sebastian was dying. Whatever mission MOBIUS had launched was going disastrously wrong. Joseph wasn’t sure what he could do to help, but he knew that he had to do something.

He stepped forward into the light.

“I can help,” he announced.

Joseph suddenly found nearly every set of eyes in the room swiveling to land directly on him.

“Send me in there with him,” Joseph insisted, trying not to let the icy cold glare of the Administrator intimidate him. “I’ve been inside STEM before. I can help him.”

After all, Joseph’s mind might have been almost entirely rewritten the last time he had entered STEM, but there was no denying that he and Sebastian had made a brilliant, almost unstoppable team.

Joseph caught Kidman’s eye. He saw a hint of something appear on her face; just a twitch at the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t tell whether she was happy to see him or not, but he was sure that she at least would understand his need to go in there and help Sebastian. After all, she had fought alongside the two of them as well.

“Joseph Oda,” the Administrator said as he got to his feet and took a single step towards Joseph. The man was tall, but it was not the only reason why Joseph had always felt dwarfed and intimidated in the other man’s presence. “I thought we revoked your permission to enter the STEM wing.”

“You did,” Joseph replied.

“And yet you’re here anyway,” the Administrator continued.

Joseph did not reply. Neither did he back down. Instead he just stood there, staring the Administrator down, his hands clenched into fists by his side. Neither of them looked away, but a small, amused smile eventually appeared on the Administrator’s face.

“I can help him,” Joseph insisted. “Please.”

“Need I remind you of your last disastrous sojourn into STEM?” the Administrator asked, taking another couple of slow steps towards Joseph. “Oh yes. Of course I know about that. I do wonder Joseph; are you in here truly because you wish to assist us, or simply because you’re worried about the fate of your ‘partner’?”

The Administrator’s tone suggested that he did not care much either way, but that he was simply curious how Joseph might respond.

“Of course, he’s not really your partner, is he?” the Administrator asked. “Tell me Joseph Oda, why should we allow you to enter STEM again when the last time you turned your backs on us so easily?”

“Please,” Joseph said, not really caring that he had been reduced to begging. It would be worth it to ensure that Sebastian remained safe. “Please just let me help him.”

The Administrator looked at Joseph again, and for just a moment Joseph allowed himself to believe that the Administrator was actually considering giving in to Joseph’s request, but then the moment passed, and the Administrator was gesturing to two of the guards who had been standing nearby.

“Get him out of here,” he told them.

Within seconds the two men were grabbing Joseph by the arms.

“No!” he screamed, trying to break free.

He just had to reach Sebastian. He just needed to make sure that he was all right. He kicked and struggled and tried to pull away from the two men, with absolutely no luck. They both had several inches on him as far as height went, and definitely more muscle.

“Sebastian!” he cried out. He knew that there was no way that Sebastian would be able to hear him inside STEM, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He stepped on one of the guard’s feet, and for just a moment his captor’s grip on his arm loosened. Joseph was almost able to slip free, but then the guard was trying to grab hold of him again.

“Wait a moment,” Kidman said, stepping towards them, her demeanor far more calm and collected than Joseph’s had been.

She placed herself between the Administrator and Joseph.

“Maybe it would be best if he was allowed to see Sebastian,” Kidman suggested, surprising Joseph by coming to his rescue. “Of course I’m not suggesting we allow him to enter STEM, or that Sebastian be allowed to interact with him in any manner, but perhaps if Joseph here was allowed to see him then it might give him some much needed closure after the events of Beacon.”

The Administrator seemed to consider her words for a moment, before nodding slowly.

“Very well,” the Administrator said. He gestured towards the two guards who had been holding Joseph, and they reluctantly let him go, Joseph shaking off the hand of one of the guards and stepping away from them.

“Say your farewells,” the Administrator told Joseph, “because I can promise you that after this moment, you and Castellanos will never see one another again.”

Joseph wasn’t sure whether the Administrator had meant it as a thinly veiled threat against him, Sebastian or the both of them, or whether perhaps he was just telling Joseph the honest truth. Whichever it was, Joseph was just glad that he had been given this one, small opportunity.

He nodded in gratitude at Kidman and then the Administrator, and slowly made his way to the other side of the STEM machine.

He found Sebastian laying in the pod that had lay closest to Kidman and her work station, although it took him a second to recognize the other man. Sebastian had changed so much since Joseph had last seen him. It had only been three years, but Sebastian looked as though he had aged ten. There were far more wrinkles around his eyes than Joseph remembered, and he thought he spotted a few grey hairs making themselves known around Sebastian’s temple. Sebastian hadn’t shaved for a while either, judging by the crop of thick stubble that had grown all over his lower face.

Sebastian’s eyes twitched in sleep as he faced whatever monstrosities STEM was throwing at him at that moment. Despite it all, the sight of Sebastian, lying there in the pod, was one of the most beautiful sights Joseph had ever seen. It felt strange to acknowledge it, but this was technically the first time Joseph had ever actually seen Sebastian in the flesh in the real world.

He knelt by the pod for a moment, trying to memorize every single line on the other man’s face. He still wished that he could have helped Sebastian out somehow. Perhaps he still could, although the Administrator’s words did not give Joseph much hope.

It was generally accepted that you shouldn’t touch a person connected to STEM. Who knew how even the simplest of touches might affect their perception of reality inside Union? Perhaps, if Joseph had not known that Sebastian had missed Joseph just as much as Joseph had missed Sebastian, then he might have hesitated.

Surely, he decided, it was worth it to risk one, simple touch. His instinct was to lean forward and place a gentle kiss to Sebastian’s forehead, but no matter how right that felt, it would be too much of a trespass while Sebastian was unconscious, and while so many strangers were watching the two of them. Instead he simply reached out and caressed the side of Sebastian’s face, the tips of his fingers brushing against as few stray strands of the other man’s hair.

Sebastian let out a soft sigh, and while his frown did not disappear, it did lessen a little.

“Sebastian,” Joseph murmured. “I’m here. Whatever you’re facing in there, I know that you can get through it. You’re strong; strong enough for the both of us. You pulled me through Beacon. You can pull yourself through now.”

There were a thousand other things that he wanted to say, but none of them felt right at that time.

Instead he left it at that. He had probably crossed the line as far as MOBIUS was concerned by even touching Sebastian, but Joseph was fairly sure it had been worth it. He did not know if fate would allow himself and Sebastian to meet again, but he knew that he was going to try to find some sort of way to make it happen.

He caught Kidman’s eyes as he was forcibly escorted out of the STEM room. He had no idea what the woman might be thinking. She was as cold and as hard to read as she always was.

Joseph could not know it, but some small part of Sebastian had been able to sense Joseph’s presence. His eyes twitched restlessly behind eyelids, and some small part of the world inside Union bent to allow a little piece of Joseph Oda to enter.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Thank you so much to everyone who continues to leave comments on this story. At the moment I'm terrible at responding to comments, but I want you all to know that they absolutely make my day, so thank you! <3

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sebastian stared at the black cat sitting on the floor in front of him. He and Kidman had just finished discussing the latest slide that he had found. The slides were still a concept that seemed strange to him. Out of all of the formats that his brain had decided memories should have come prepackaged in, they had chosen slides. Not photographs, not even old polaroid ones. Slides.

The cat stared back at him, it’s slightly ominous red eyes blinking slowly, as though it was a real cat and not just a figment of his imagination. It meowed at him, and got to its feet, slowly padding across the black and white tiled floor. It was unusual to say the least. The entire time Sebastian had been inside Union, the animal had not moved more than a few feet away from the slide projector at any time, or at least not while Sebastian had been inside his safe room.

“What is it?” Sebastian asked the creature.

It let out another demanding ‘meow’ in reply.

“You want me to follow you?” Sebastian asked.

The creature meowed again, and then picked up the pace, disappearing around a corner.

Sebastian followed the animal through what was a mostly faithful reproduction of the KCPD’s Missing Persons department. The slide projector had certainly been a new addition, as had the cat. Being in the office when no-one else was around was a little eerie, and it didn’t help that there were next to no signs of the individuals that Sebastian had known owned each of the workspaces he walked past.

It was the safest place that he had found inside STEM so far though, and if the cat was going to harm Sebastian then he suspected that it would have done so already, so he walked after it, wondering where on earth it was trying to lead him.

He spotted it running down a nearby corridor and chased after it. He knew that unless things had changed that the only thing at the end of that particular corridor was the wheelchair that would transport him to a particularly dark room where he could talk to a particularly strange nurse whenever he wished. It was one of those parts of this version of STEM that had never really made much sense to him. It worked though, and so he saw no point in questioning it.

Sure enough the cat came to a stop by the wheelchair and stared up at Sebastian as though expecting something from him.

“What?” Sebastian asked the cat. “You want me to sit in the chair?”

The cat jumped up into the chair itself, and Sebastian figured that had to be a yes.

He took another step towards the chair, but didn’t make it any further than that before he found himself being suddenly transported to the dark room from an angle he had never approached it from before.

Nurse Tatiana was standing beside the wheelchair. Sebastian had never been able to work out whether or not she had ever actually been a real person or was just a figment of his imagination, but he was glad for her presence either way. There was no sign of the cat.

“Congratulations Sebastian,” Nurse Tatiana said, her hand resting on the back of the wheelchair. “You’ve almost completed the inner journey that you began so long ago. You have faced down your own demons. You have risked great harm to emerge triumphant.”

Sebastian wondered what the hell had prompted Tatiana to make this speech of hers, and why she had picked that exact moment to do it.

“But,” Tatiana continued after only a moment’s pause. “There is still a memory that you’ve refused to confront.”

“What do you mean?” Sebastian asked.

Tatiana did not answer him. Instead, right there in the middle of the wheelchair’s seat, appeared another slide. There wasn’t much light in this particular room, but there was still enough to make the film of the slide gleam enticingly.

“Here,” Tatiana prompted him. “This will help you.”

Sebastian swallowed nervously. He had a feeling that he knew exactly what it was that Tatiana was talking about. This particular sojourn into STEM had helped him come to terms with a lot of what had been troubling him, and he had been forced to face many of his old demons. He now knew the truth of what had happened to his daughter Lily and his wife Myra. He at least vaguely understood what had happened inside Beacon Mental Hospital, and knew that he could blame MOBIUS for all of it; for Lily’s and Myra’s disappearances, for Ruvik and the whole mess in Beacon; for almost everything that had ever gone wrong with his life. Previously his hate had been directed almost entirely back at himself, but now it had a new target; a more deserving one.

There was one thing that he still knew had been his fault however; one person that he hadn’t finished grieving for, and who he had point blank refused to think about while inside STEM. He knew that it would give Union and his demons far too much ammunition to work with.

He was almost afraid to pick up the slide, but nevertheless he walked towards the wheelchair. He had faced all of his other demons and had emerged victorious, and become all the more strong and confident because of it.

Before he could make it however the world flickered around him, and suddenly he was back in the replica of the KCPD offices. He was standing in front of the wheelchair, and the slide was still there, so, ignoring that small part of his mind that insisted that dealing with this particular memory would be a bad idea, he leaned down and picked up the slide.

When he made his way back to the other room he discovered that the black cat was back beside the slide projector.

It howled at him as he drew close. He smiled weakly as he sat down beside it and fired up the slide projector once more.

He had known what to expect when he inserted the slide, but it still made the breath catch in his throat. His heart skipped a couple of beats.

Right there on the screen in front of him was a picture of himself and Joseph Oda. Joseph had a wide smile on his face and appeared to be gesturing mid-sentence. Sebastian stood beside him, looking younger and happier than he had felt in years.

Joseph. Sebastian’s partner. His friend.

Unlike the other slides, there was no way that this one could have been based on a real photograph. Sebastian had come to terms with the fact that ninety per cent of his memories with Joseph had been fake, but of course that didn’t mean a single damned thing as far as STEM was concerned.

Sebastian could even remember the day that the photo had been taken on, as though it were a real one and not just another fake memory. It had, his fake memories told him, been the day on which he had told Joseph than he and Myra were expecting a baby. Joseph had been the first person that Sebastian had told, at least in that version of events, and he had insisted on taking Sebastian out for drinks after work to celebrate.

Those drinks had never happened, but it didn’t matter. The memories were still there, as was the powerful surge of emotion that had swelled in Sebastian’s chest as soon as he had seen the image on this slide.

He picked up his communicator and called up Kidman. Heavens knew he needed to talk things through with someone, and Kidman had, at the very least, met Joseph Oda while the three of them had been in STEM together. Perhaps she would be able to understand where no-one else did. Hell, perhaps her position within MOBIUS meant that she knew far more about the real Joseph Oda than Sebastian could ever hope to.

“Sebastian?” Kidman answered almost immediately. “Calling back so soon? What’s up?”

Sebastian considered how he should begin.

“After all this time,” he said, “there’s something we’ve never talked about.”

“Sounds ominous,” Kidman said. “What is it?”

She sounded worried. She didn’t need to be. Not really. If it had been another time, or if Sebastian hadn’t known that Kidman had turned her back on her MOBIUS overlords, then things might have gone differently, but as it was he was too tired to start anything with Kidman. Besides, it might have been Kidman who had pulled the trigger on Joseph, but Sebastian had been the one to drag him into the whole Beacon mess. It was Sebastian’s fault that the greatest friend he had never had was dead.

“Not what,” he said. “Who. Joseph.”

“Right,” Kidman replied.

For a moment Sebastian had wondered whether he had needed to add a last name onto the end, but apparently not. Kidman already sounded as though she knew exactly who and what Sebastian was talking about.

“I know that you respected Joseph and that he felt the same way toward you,” Kidman said.

‘Respected’. That was one word for it, but not one that Sebastian thought he would have used. He had loved Joseph, and sure, respect had probably been a small part of that, but there had been so much more to it than that. Sebastian wondered what their relationship had looked like from the outside; him suddenly showing up with a man who must have been a total stranger to Kidman in tow. He wondered how much Kidman had been caught up in their shared delusion, or whether she had known from the start that something had been wrong with the two of them.

He had so many questions, and he wasn’t sure that they had time for all of them right at that moment, but he knew that he needed to talk to someone about Joseph. Tatiana had been right. Joseph was the one part of Beacon that he still hadn’t come to terms with.

“I never had the opportunity to make amends about that,” Sebastian told Kidman. “Things were… confusing after Beacon. I should have tried to get answers about what happened. I mean, I know what happened.”

He knew that, in his loneliness, he had pulled a mentally ill Beacon patient into a dangerous delusion, and had consequently put him in more danger than Joseph should have ever had to face, and that, in the end, he had died inside STEM.

“Don’t worry,” Sebastian continued. “I can’t fault you for what you did, but I still blame myself for his death.”

“You don’t have to do that Sebastian,” Kidman said.

Sebastian had heard a lot of similar sentiments over the last few hours or days or weeks or however long it was that he had been inside STEM.

While Sebastian had been willing to accept that he no longer needed to carry his guilt for Lily’s death (which hadn’t really happened) or even her disappearance (which he was now firmly blaming on MOBIUS) or even for the deaths of all of those that he had failed to save inside Beacon Mental Hospital, he knew that he was not yet ready to do the same where Joseph Oda was concerned.

He should be blamed for Joseph’s death. Someone needed to be, and unfortunately Joseph’s fate was one of the few that he could not bring himself to blame MOBIUS for.

“Why not?” Sebastian hissed into his communicator, unable to stop the small amount of venom that crept into his voice. “You prefer that I blame you? You’re the one that actually killed him.”

“No I didn’t,” Kidman replied.

She sounded so very calm and rational and suddenly Sebastian just wanted to reach through the communicator and strangle her.

He could still see her pointing the gun at Leslie, and then Joseph; strong, caring, selfless Joseph, was running in and taking the bullet for a young man that he had never even met before that moment.

And then everything had fallen down around them. Perhaps it was appropriate. Perhaps the city _should_ have fallen down as soon as Joseph had been taken from the world.

“I saw you shoot him Kidman,” Sebastian hissed.

“I know you did, but…”

“But what!?”

“Joseph isn’t dead.”

Those three simple words brought Sebastian’s thoughts screeching to a sudden halt. The entire world felt as though it had changed and all it had taken was three simple words from Kidman.

“What? Are you…?” Sebastian stammered.

Was Kidman lying to him? Was this just another one of MOBIUS’s cruel tricks?

“No,” he muttered. “It can’t…”

Joseph couldn’t still be alive. If Joseph was still alive then he and Sebastian had spent three years separated from one another for no good reason at all. Sebastian should have gone after him. He should have asked more questions. Rather than assuage Sebastian’s guilt and anger it was just making it even worse.

Sebastian had thought that he’d had plenty of questions about Joseph before that moment. Now he had even more.

“What happened to him?” Sebastian demanded. “Where is he?”

After all, if Kidman knew about Joseph then that probably meant that MOBIUS knew about him as well. Who knew what they had done to him? A paranoid, delusional and ultimately lost soul like Joseph Oda would probably be MOBIUS’s idea of a perfect test subject. Sebastian would probably need to save him, which of course he would do as soon as he had grabbed Lily and Myra and managed to get all three of them out of MOBIUS.

“That’s a long story,” Kidman told him. “And a conversation for another time, when we’re both safe. Just know that you don’t have to blame yourself for his death anymore. I’ve got to go Sebastian. Let’s finish this and we can talk later?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian muttered into the communicator. “You bet we’re going to talk later.”

* * *

Kidman hung up the communicator and let out a long sigh of relief. She hadn’t anticipated that Sebastian and Joseph might have grown to care for one another as much as they clearly had outside of STEM. She hadn’t planned for it.

She was going to have to make some changes to the plan. She just hoped that they had enough time.


End file.
